Apartment owners say the government is not living up to its end of the bargain.
Irina Myakota, a 47-year-old broker, lives in an old four-story building with columns on Gonchara Street in Kyiv. It has been seven years since dwellers of her house have lived without the dreaded “ZHEK,” and they are so much the better for it.
ZHEK in Ukraine is the local residential utilities office, highly inefficient, which manages utilities and building upkeep in neighborhoods.
Myakota and her neighbors rescued themselves from the clutches of ZHEK by becoming owners of their own house. In other words, they created a condominium and an association of the co-owners of the apartment building.
Now they are responsible for everything that happens with the house, be it the changing of broken windows, painting of walls or the picking up of garbage. Myakota was not sure, however, that they did the right thing when they started.
But it is turning out beautifully, in comparison to neighbors still held hostage by ZHEK.
Fungi are not covering the walls of her house’s entrance, as they do in nearby houses, which are still ZHEK’s responsibility.
We are hardly surviving.”
– Irina Myakota, an owner of the house.
Syringes and banana peels are not tossed around her staircase either, a common sight in many Ukrainian landings.
There is a functioning lock on the entrance door. This is why homeless tramps do not spend nights inside her house and passersby do not urinate in her elevator during the daytime.
Myakota, one of the activists of her condominium, is not completely satisified.
She would like to see support from the city for improvements such as the fixing of elevators or the cleaning of courtyards.
“We are hardly surviving,” Myakota said. “But it wasn’t better with the ZHEK. When we had a ZHEK, we had nothing at all.”
But ZHEKS are on their way out within the next three years.
According to the communal reform that will come into force by the end of 2014, Ukrainian citizens will have to create ownership associations – known by the Russian acronym OSMD — in about 70 percent of apartment buildings.
Ilya Zuyev says his private ZhilKom company will work much better than ZHEKs do.
“The purpose of the reform in Ukraine is to involve apartment owners into managing their houses and to take private houses off the state burden,” said Ilya Zuyev, deputy head of the private company ZhilKom Ukraine.
As of the beginning of 2011, Zuev’s company will start managing three ZHEKs and 88 apartment buildings on the outskirts of Kyiv, in Vinogradar area.
The purpose of the reform in Ukraine is to involve apartment owners into managing their houses and to take private houses off the state burden.”
– Ilya Zuyev, deputy head of the private company ZhilKom Ukraine.
Privatization of apartments started in Ukraine right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most people then bought their apartments from the state for peanuts.
In Soviet times, housing was state-owned and apartments could not be sold. Landings, staircase, roofs, cellars and courtyards remained state-owned. And all of this will soon change.
Powerless OSMD
From information supplied by the Ministry of Housing and Communal sector, so far Ukrainians have created OSMDs – or ownership associations — only in 15 percent of apartment buildings that are at least five-story high.
The largest numbers of OSMDs are in the Donetsk Oblast (2140), Lviv Oblast (779), Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (682), Mykolayiv Oblast (655) and Odessa Oblast (625). In Kyiv Oblast, only 135 exist.
But the responsibility of condo associations means having to survive without any state help – and that can mean costly bills for them if something goes wrong. In Kyiv’s old buildings, something is bound to go wrong, sooner or later.
Natalia Oleinik, head of the department of the strategic reform of the housing and communal sector, said in 2007- 2008, the government did not allocate money for major repairs of houses with condo associations.
This appears to run counter to a law that requires the state to conduct major repairs before authorities transfer the responsibilities to the condo owners.
The list of major repairs includes repair of roofs and elevators and, generally, the most costly aspects of building maintenance.
There is no other way for the state rather than to create a society of housing’s owners of the apartment buildings that can help maintain a house.”
– Natalia Oleinik, head of the department of the strategic reform of the housing and communal sector.
“There is no other way for the state rather than to create a society of housing’s owners of the apartment buildings that can help maintain a house,” Oleinik said.
But the government is helping. Next year, she said authorites will allocate 13 times more money (some two billion hryvnias) in the budget for major repairs of houses belonging to their owners. This year, the government has spent only Hr 150 million hryvnias.
It can’t be worse.
Galina Peresunko, a 58-year-old pensioner is happy to be part of a condo association and rid of ZHEK. Building tenants have hired a concierge, put a new lock on the entrance door, the landings and staircases are clean, the light bulbs are fixed and the elevator is always working.
But, she says, “there is enough money only for little things.” The house facade needs to be redone to keep the heat in, the roof needs repair and there are cracks in the walls.
“This is why people who live in apartment blocks in sleeping areas are afraid to create [an association] – one needs to have money to maintain the house,” she said.
This is where property management firms come in. Zuyev from ZhilKom said anything that eliminates ZHEKS will be an improvement.
“Tenants will become customers of the managing company,” Zuyev said. “They have the right to control the works and to change the managing company.”
But there are only 18 apartments in the old house with columns on Gonchara Street where Taisiya Zaretska, a 57-year-old historian lives.
I find comfort in the thought that everything belongs upon us.”
– Taisiya Zaretska, an owner of the house.
And many property management firms are interested only in highrises with lots of apartment units. Still, Zaretska who heads the building’s association, said residents will try to get everything done by themselves.
“I find comfort in the thought that everything belongs upon us,” she said.
“Windows in the cellar are very bad. Now we have collected money and we will replace them with new plastic ones. How long would we have to wait until ZHEK had replaced them? Our lives won’t be long enough to wait for that.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Irina Sandul can be reached at [email protected].
