Ukrainians to get Housing Code by end of summer
Civic activists are saying “no” to street protests, while human rights advocates go on hunger strikesLast Wednesday Kyiv’s streets heated up again, and not just because the June sun came back after the Whitsun rains. The city center once again saw a crowd of indignant civic activists with banners, placards, bullhorns, and open letters to the authorities. The source of their anger is the Housing Code, which the government promises to adopt as early as by the end of summer.
About 100 people dissatisfied with the “enslaving terms” of the government-proposed version of the law book gathered on Instytutska Street, where a relevant parliamentary committee was discussing the draft Housing Code on the eve of its second reading. They were convinced that the proposed law would “deprive millions of Ukrainians of their rights in their own places of residence and legitimize ‘housing slavery.’”
“The code is written in such a way that every Ukrainian will have to face exorbitant charges and be left without any options,” the protest organizers say. This is because, under the new housing regulations, all individuals will be using the services of managing companies. Vasyl Hatsko, chair of the All-Ukrainian youth civic organization Democratic Alliance and coordinator of the protest action, explained to The Day that the latter are posing the gravest threat to the housing code. “As, in line with the official policy, house maintenance offices are to be disbanded in the next few years, the government is going to introduce a new player: the managing company,” he says, “but, as there is a certain lobby, nobody is interested in having a full-fledged competitive market of these companies. So, to minimize the consumer’s choice, the [code’s drafters] have come up with the following: firstly, managing companies will be appointed by the local government bodies; secondly, should an Apartment House Owners Association be set up at a building, it will still be unable to function on a self-supporting basis because lawmakers saw to it that every building should be obliged to choose only one managing company.”
Yet it is by no means the last complaint about the code. Another glaring example of legislative abuse is that individuals are being in fact robbed of the possibility to refuse to sign the housing services contract. Indeed, under the new draft Housing Code, a publicly offered contract, which includes suggestions to the consumer, is not supposed to be done in writing. So it is enough to publish it in a local newspaper, which will mean that residents have accepted the proposed utility charges, Hatsko explains.
So the protestors bitterly conclude: should the parliament vote this version of the Housing Code into law, Ukrainians will be unable to escape this slavery, which will “embrace all residential buildings.” “The code will enable managing companies to make short work of people — they will have the right to evict people from their own place of residence and allow housing inspectors to crash into apartments without a court order, something even the police cannot do,” says the Manifesto against Housing Slavery already signed by about 20 civic organizations.
The protestors demand that parliament vote down the Housing Code and prevent the establishment of a monopolistic position of managing companies in the public utilities sector. The MPs should also urgently pass laws that give apartment owners a real possibility to be full-fledged co-owners of buildings and effectively manage their own property.
It will be recalled that Tetiana Montian, a well-known housing law rights champion, recently announced on the TBi TV channel that she was going on a six-week hunger strike in protest against the draft Housing Code.
