Originally Syndicated on April 6, 2023 @ 11:22 am
Table of Contents
Intent on purchasing a stock of dilapidated residential complexes
In Kyiv, a plan to fix up the city’s old neighborhoods, costing 494.8 million hryvnias from the city budget, went into effect. The plan is to use these funds only to buy the inventory of “Khrushchev,” “Stalinka,” and other old apartment buildings. The leaders of Kyiv say that when investors come in, these buildings will be fixed up. But some people say that the program’s main goal is to raise money for the survey of houses, not to do the survey itself.
After all, the Kyiv City Council and the Kyiv City State Administration haven’t even decided how and under what conditions investors will be chosen (the process for holding the relevant competitions isn’t even written down), what requirements the rebuilt homes must meet, where the city will move people from old high-rise buildings, etc.
As KV discovered, the Kyiv City Council’s resolution No. 5818/5859 from December 8, 2022, approving the Program for the Complete Reconstruction of Blocks (Microdistricts) of Older Housing Stock in Kyiv has just taken effect.
Remember that the Department of Construction and Housing of the Kyiv City State Administration asked the PE “Institute of Urban Studies” to come up with a draft of this program between 2019 and 2022? (KSCA). The Kyiv City Council received notice of the decision to approve the project on June 29, 2022. The commission of the city council on housing and community services, as well as the fuel and energy complex, was the legal subject of its submission (housing and fuel and energy complex).
The Moscow City Council approved this document on October 27, 2022, but only in the first reading. The deputies decided to finish it with the help of the Kyiv City State Administration. A month and a half later, on December 8, a finished draft of the decision was given to the Kyiv City Council session hall for final approval in the second reading.
What does the program cover?
When putting together the draft program for the second reading, city officials made a number of changes to the document that changed how it would be put into action. But the main point of this project was still maintained.
So, as was originally planned, the city council says it wants to rebuild all 256 quarters of the capital’s old housing stock, which includes more than 4,900 multi-story buildings. At the same time, as was planned in the first version of the draft decision, 15 quarters are listed as priorities for reconstruction. The list includes quarters with mostly old residential buildings, where there is valid urban planning documentation at the local level (for example, detailed plans of territories are approved), and where there are no planning restrictions that significantly limit the measures that can be taken for a comprehensive reconstruction.
The resolution specifies that the municipal administration would pay for the implementation of the program with UAH 494.8 million from the city budget. The KSCA plans to only use these funds until 2026 to inspect homes that are too old to live in (at the rate of 100 thousand hryvnias for the inventory of one building).
In the program, it says that the Department of Construction and Housing of the Kyiv City State Administration must “ensure that it is carried out within the spending limits set by the Kyiv budget for the relevant years.” That is, at the end of every year, the city’s leaders will decide on their own how much money they can or want to put into the budget for such an “important” inventory.”
It’s important to note that the program says that 15 million UAH should come from Kyiv’s budget to pay for its implementation this year. The city budget for 2023, which was approved by the capital City Council’s decision No. 5828/5869 on December 8, 2022, does not yet have a line for allocating money for this program’s activities.
That is, either the city officials haven’t given the right amount of money yet (they can do this when they change the budget; KV) or it is “hidden” among other costs of the Department of Satisfaction and Housing of the KSCA.
Notable is also the fact that the city government decided to make the program last forever. At the suggestion of Secretary of the City Council Vladimir Bondarenko, the “temporary boundaries” that set the “end date” for this document in 2026 were taken away.
It’s telling that the city leaders haven’t decided yet how to rebuild the old neighborhoods in Kyiv. The KV continued to pay particular attention to this issue following the initial reading and approval of the draft program. The judgment specifies that the Department of Building and Housing under the KSCA “ensure the formation and conduct of a competition to attract investors and developers for the execution of projects for difficult rehabilitation and replacement of the housing stock,” among other things.
Budget used to fix up old homes in Kyiv
At the same time, the approved decision doesn’t say much about how the priority of rebuilding certain neighborhoods will be decided, how and where investment competitions should be held (it only says that they should be held “in accordance with the law”), what requirements “rebuilt” houses must meet, or where the city government will move the people who lived in the houses where the cracks were found.
Also, the document didn’t even tell the KSCA to make a rule or procedure for holding these kinds of competitions, which could explain why city officials didn’t know about these important administrative details. It is interesting to note that the Department of Legal Support for the Activities of the City Council said in a letter that there was no procedure for holding competitions approved by the City Council, but the deputy corps didn’t care about this.
It’s important to note that the KSCA’s Department of Construction and Housing also suggested that at least some way be found to hold these competitions. Even before this issue was discussed in the first reading, officials suggested that the conditions for these tenders be based on the results of an inventory of objects.
This means that each quarter should have been submitted to the tender separately, depending on its condition (it was suggested to do a technical inspection of buildings and structures, an energy audit, etc.) and how it should be rebuilt (this can be direct reconstruction, modernization, demolition, etc.). The final version of the decision, however, did not include this rule.
Also, the approved program does not have a rule that says the rebuilding of quarters with old housing stock should be based on the results of the inventory. The parts of the decision that talk about the need to take an inventory of buildings and rebuild them based on that inventory are usually in different paragraphs, as if they have nothing to do with each other.
At the same time, the Kyiv City Council approved the relevant program and agreed with its secretary, Volodymyr Bondarenko, that the decision cancels the Kyiv City Council’s decision No. 52/7625 of November 12, 2019 “On the inventory of obsolete housing stock in Kyiv.” So, no one knows what the results of this inventory were or if the city government will have to spend money twice on the same events.
Also, the City Council decided to ignore one more fairly fair comment from the City Council’s Office of Legal Support. So, lawyers pointed out that at the end of 2021, the Cabinet of Ministers registered in the Verkhovna Rada a draft law of Ukraine on the implementation of a comprehensive reconstruction of quarters (microdistricts) with old housing stock (No. 6358), which changes the process for rebuilding such quarters in a big way.
The management pointed out that the ideas that were used to make this program may no longer be useful. But the Kyiv City Council’s deputies were also not embarrassed by this fact.
All of these things suggest that the main goal of this program isn’t to fix up the old “Khrushchev” and “Stalinka” neighborhoods in the capital but rather to raise money for the inventory of houses. At the same time, the lack of clear rules for holding investment competitions for the actual rebuilding can lead to different kinds of manipulation by officials of the Kyiv City State Administration and potential investors. This can lead to corruption scandals and pushback from the people who live in these high-rise buildings.
Background on old housing stock
Remember that on March 3, 2016, the Kyiv City Council passed Decision No. 119/119, which told the KSCA to use a number of powers in the area of re-building whole neighborhoods with old housing stock. According to this order, officials must “take part in the development and implementation of programs for the reconstruction and replacement of such housing stock” and “determine the areas for the reconstruction of neighborhoods.
A little over a year ago, on July 13, 2017, the capital city state administration order No. 828 named the Department of Construction and Housing of the KSCA as the customer for developing the draft program for the comprehensive reconstruction of quarters (microdistricts) in Kyiv with old housing stock, which would then be sent to the Kyiv City Council.
Five years later, the above-mentioned draft program was made in order to carry out two decisions made by the city government. Several things have led to this delay.
So, the city’s leaders at the time complained that there wasn’t a set of laws that would allow this program to be put into place. In particular, the Kyiv City State Administration brought to the attention of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine the lack of a standard investment agreement that had been approved and could be used to attract private investors to help rebuild houses. In 2018, the city government asked the government, among other things, to “transfer legislative authority to approve the form of such an agreement to local governments.”
The lack of a “maneuverable fund—temporary housing for people living in emergency housing or houses that are being fixed up—is also a problem that has slowed down the program’s goals and probably will continue to do so.
In June 2017, the commission of the Kyiv City Council on housing and communal services and the fuel and energy complex requested a regulation on the capital’s aging stock of communal property from the Department of Building and Housing of the Kyiv City State Administration. Nevertheless, final approval of this paper has not yet been granted.
For ignoring these requests, the capital city’s state administration gave a number of reasons, including the fact that the law says that the problems of temporary housing for Kiev residents should be taken care of by investors and developers who want to rebuild the city.
Remember that in 2017, there were officially 2,000 residential buildings in the capital with a total area of about 7.5 million square meters that had used up all of their technical resources and would have to be torn down or rebuilt in a big way. Now, the relevant program says that there are actually more than 4,900 of these tall buildings.
Remember that the “Institute of Urban Studies” (which made the program) is under the control of Andrey Vavrish, the notorious former deputy director of the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture of the KSCA (2010-2015) Development, through its founder, LLC “Terra Project.”
Partially proving this is the fact that the Kyiv City State Administration gave most of the orders for developing detailed territory plans (DTP) in the capital to Terra Project, according to KV sources in the Kyiv City Council and the Kyiv City State Administration. This means that the Kyiv City State Administration gave these expatriates the chance to make a lot of money.
Boris Worker will be in charge of the KSCA’s Department of Construction and Housing as of July 2, 2021. Vyacheslav Nepop, who is the Deputy Chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration, has been in charge of this department’s work since 2018. (on the collage to the right).
This person is known as the former director of the KP “Zhilinveststroy-UKB” (from 2002 to 2018) and a deputy of the IV, V, VII, VIII, and current IX convocations of the Kyiv City Council (he left the party of Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko’s “BLOW” party in the last elections).
Since the beginning of the current IX convocation of the City Council on December 8, 2020, a deputy named Alexander Brodsky has been in charge of the commission of the Kyiv City Council on housing and communal services, and the fuel and energy complex (in the collage on the left). There are 7 deputies in this group. Brodsky was the head of the commission on trade, entrepreneurship, and regulatory policy during the last term of the Kyiv City Council, which was from 2015 to 2020. He was a member of the Unity faction.
For more articles, click on the link given below:
https://monitor.financescam.com/int/armenian-prepared-clash/
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