So, a one-room apartment costs 5,800 rubles, while at the same time, in 1975, a VAZ 2101 cost 5,500 rubles. UNCLEAR! How come? What is undervalued or what is overvalued?

By the way, the housing cooperative also provided a loan for 20 years at some small interest.

And a good comment there under the article:

1. That is, in the USSR the cost of 1 sq. m. meter was equal to the average monthly salary.

2. Today the average cost per square meter in Moscow is 171,000 rubles. and the average monthly salary is 22,000.

3. The sale of the cooperative apartment was permitted. But WHEN BUYING, THE MEMBERS OF THE COOPERATIVE HAD AN ADVANTAGE, since the price was fixed and not selling, but SPECULATION was prohibited, and from the point of view of money it made no difference to whom to sell..

THE TEXT ITSELF:

Those who are interested in how much an apartment cost in the USSR can be reminded that the bulk of the population lived in apartments received from the state. Citizens stood in line to improve the living conditions that existed at enterprises and government agencies. This wait could last 15-20 years.

Only in 1958, by a special resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, citizens were allowed to create housing and construction cooperatives, in which they could purchase an apartment for a certain price. The price of the apartment depended on the total estimated cost of the residential building project. That is, in the USSR, the cost of an apartment for an individual family should not be less than the estimated cost of the apartment itself. And the area and number of rooms in the apartment that could be purchased was determined by the composition of the family and existing standards. In the USSR, even if a family had the money to pay what a larger apartment cost, it was impossible to buy it if it exceeded the established standard.

The price of an apartment in the Union was determined based on government prices for construction, installation and finishing work. In addition, how much the apartment cost was influenced by the cost of materials and labor. So, for example, in 1971 in the central part of the USSR, the cost of 1 sq.m of apartment was about 160 rubles. Naturally, in areas with more severe weather conditions, the cost of an apartment was higher and reached 200 rubles per 1 sq.m.

Prices for apartments in the Union, of course, were different, but not by much, since standard projects were used for construction, in which the area of ​​​​built-in premises and rooms was small. Housing standards were only 6-8 square meters of living space per person. The cost of an apartment in the USSR, consisting of one room and having a total area of ​​36 sq.m., was about 5,800 rubles. The price of an apartment consisting of three rooms was close to 10,000. At a time when the average salary was about 150 rubles, not every citizen of the USSR could afford to buy an apartment at that price.

Only a few could afford to pay what an apartment cost in the USSR at a time. Usually, these were people who received a large sum at once - laureates of various state awards. For the rest, even wealthy citizens, the cost of the apartment could only be paid in installments, by taking out a loan or a loan from an enterprise. The price of an apartment in the USSR was so high for a simple engineer, teacher or doctor that it was considered a real luxury. Those who could afford to pay the cost of the apartment belonged to the country's elite or to those who, even then, could make money through dishonest means. In the Union, young people could not pay such a price for an apartment, so cooperatives usually consisted of mature people who had already achieved some material benefits in life.

But no matter how much an apartment cost in the USSR, it was impossible to sell it on your own. Such issues were resolved only by a general meeting of members of the housing cooperative.

In the photo: construction of a cooperative house of series II-57 on Vernadsky Avenue in the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro area. Moscow, late 60s.

Usually in my texts I talk about certain details of Soviet life and the functioning of the USSR as a system. But today, on the contrary, I appeal to readers with a request to answer one question related to the so-called. cooperative houses in Soviet times. A discussion arose among my friends about this and it turned out that one issue related to these houses was not clear to us. The point is this.

In Soviet times, the residential landscape in cities consisted of three parts: private houses, which somehow survived from the old days. Even within Moscow there were a number of such houses, and in the provinces, especially in small towns, private housing stock made up a noticeable percentage. True, people were gradually moved from these houses into apartments (in this regard, you can watch the film “White Dews,” beloved by some).

The second part of the city's housing stock is public housing. In fact, this is rather the first part, since most of the houses in Soviet cities, especially large ones, were state-owned.

And finally, there were also the so-called. cooperative houses, so called because they were not state property, but the property of those cooperatives (associations of people) that built these houses. Cooperative property in the USSR was considered a type of socialist property, which differed from state property in a lesser degree of socialization.

Cooperative ownership in the USSR was quite common. Actually, Soviet collective farms were cooperatives, only agricultural ones. But urban housing cooperatives (housing and construction cooperatives) were created with a single purpose: the construction and operation at their own expense of comfortable residential buildings in cities. The first prototypes of FSW appeared back in the 20s. But the full-fledged movement of housing cooperatives began thanks to Khrushchev after the release on June 1, 1962 of the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On individual and cooperative housing construction.”

The activities of the housing cooperative were regulated by the adopted standard charter, and any citizen who had reached the age of 18, permanently residing in the area, and who needed housing, could become a member. Housing cooperatives were organized at institutions or enterprises. To form a housing cooperative in Moscow, at least 60 members were required. In other cities this number decreased (proportional to the number of residents in the city). Each member of the housing cooperative contributed a share, the size of which could not be less than the estimated cost of a separate apartment, the size of which depended on the number of family members, but could not by law exceed 60 square meters. For construction, a housing cooperative could receive a loan from the USSR Stroybank for a period of 10-20 years in the amount of up to 60-70% of the total cost (with subsequent repayment). The interest on the loan in modern times was simply fabulous - 0.5% per annum. This, of course, was a strong point of Soviet legislation in the field of cooperative housing construction.

A specific subtlety of Soviet realities in the sphere of urban housing was the management of houses. Most of the city houses were state-owned, and the state somehow had to maintain these houses, manage them, like any other property. The residents of these houses were not the owners of the apartments in which they lived (no matter what Soviet model designers and designers fantasize about today, composing fairy tales about how the state allegedly gave apartments to Soviet people as their own, and even free of charge). Since the state was Soviet, that is, the form of the state was the so-called. The Soviets, and even the houses, belonged to these same Soviets of People's Deputies. And they were managed through the executive committee of the Soviets, or rather, through the structural divisions of the executive committees - housing maintenance offices (ZhEKs), subordinate to the public utilities departments.

Nowadays, many people misunderstand housing offices as a kind of Soviet analogue of modern management companies. However, this is a fundamentally erroneous idea. A housing office, in fact, is a collection of all households compactly located in a certain area. The housing office had a unified economic and financial plan and a unified management, which is most often understood as the housing office (a typical housing office management is shown in the film “Afonya”). Each housing office had its own apparatus and a certain number of employees, whose task was to maintain and repair subordinate houses. Since all the houses and all apartments in these houses were state-owned, that is, in fact, the housing office managed both the houses and apartments in these houses, the residents did not pay for any repairs in the apartments, just as they did not pay for repairs in the entrance or basement. It was a subsidized system - the state itself paid for all types of repairs, including capital ones, of its housing stock. Different republics may have had their own nuances, but in general the system of servicing state houses was like this. This is why Soviet rents were so low.

But cooperative houses, since they were not the property of the state, but of the housing cooperative that built them, did not have state subsidies for maintenance.

The modern home maintenance system is different. Each apartment in an apartment building (MKD) has its own owner. Accordingly, the owner himself pays for the repairs inside such an apartment. Moreover, in addition to apartments, each house has a so-called common property - entrances, elevators, attics, basements, roofing, etc. These properties are usually maintained by commercial or municipal organizations called management companies. In Moscow, for example, many old Soviet houses are maintained not by private management companies, but by a certain monster called the State Budgetary Institution “Zhilischnik”. But the difference is only in the form of ownership, and not in the principle of operation. The service organization (Management Company, State Budgetary Institution Zhilischnik, etc.) on a commercial basis collects from residents and owners amounts that collectively compensate for all the organization’s expenses for maintaining common property, plus a certain margin, which constitutes the company’s profit. This, by the way, leads to constant squabbling between owners and management companies. The owners are usually sure that management companies take a lot from them, but do nothing themselves. The management companies in response state that some owners do not pay anything at all and they, the management companies, are incurring losses that need to be compensated somehow. In general, the dispute is old and seemingly insoluble. But that's not what I'm talking about now.

So that's the crux of my question. In Soviet state houses there was no such concept - common house property. Simply because the entire house down to the last brick, including all the apartments, belonged to the state (the Soviets) and was the property of the state.

But with cooperative houses it was, as I described above, different. They belonged to the housing cooperative. And housing cooperatives are an association of shareholders. And each shareholder, it turns out, was the owner of the apartment for which he contributed a share. However, on the other hand, he was not a full-fledged owner. For example, he could not bequeath his apartment to anyone after his death. If a shareholder died, then his heirs, who did not live with him, could claim compensation for their share from the cooperative, but the apartment itself was transferred to the cooperative and the cooperative itself decided what to do with it next (and you can imagine what kind of squabbling began between the members of the cooperative At such moments). But for simplicity, we will assume that the cooperative member was the full owner of his apartment (at least until his death).

But what about elevators, staircases, interior lighting, basements, attics and everything else that today comes under the heading “common property”. Who paid for the maintenance of this part of the houses? Were any additional amounts charged from the members of the cooperative, such as now “for common property” or did the members of the cooperative pay a single amount, only more than in state houses? And, by the way, how much higher were the rents in cooperative houses compared to state ones? Please note: I mean rent, and not payment for utilities (water, heating, electricity, gas, etc.). And who serviced the cooperative houses anyway? After all, housing offices were structures servicing state houses, but what about cooperative ones? Did the cooperative houses have any similar structures of their own, or did the cooperatives enter into agreements with the nearest housing office? Or was there some kind of scheme like modern HOAs, when those who provided maintenance were recruited from among the members of the cooperative?

These are the questions that neither I nor any of my competent comrades could answer.

And besides, another related question arose. After the disappearance of the USSR, the state began to get rid of excess property, the maintenance of which required enormous amounts of money. And then most of the apartments were transferred by the state to the residents free of charge (privatization). But the state could not do anything like that with cooperative property. After all, cooperative houses were owned by housing cooperatives, not the state. So here’s a related question: what is the current status of these former Soviet cooperative houses?

These are the questions. I would be grateful if any of the readers provide answers. Likewise, if someone provides some more details about Soviet housing cooperatives, it would also be interesting. For example, what was the minimum share size in rubles. How long did you have to wait for the construction of the house to be completed from the moment the housing cooperative was created? Well, etc.

If you talk about housing with people now, over the age of 50 you will often hear the phrase “I got an apartment this year.” For a modern young man to hear “got it” in relation to housing is at least surprising, but it’s true. How did people get housing in Soviet times?...

Basically, there were four possibilities for acquiring housing - getting a state apartment, building a house, buying a cooperative apartment and getting housing from parents at the place of registration.


With regard to cooperatives, everything is almost simple - a housing cooperative was created in an organization, at an enterprise, or in a city or district. This cooperative received a loan from the state or the enterprise for which it built the house.
Those wishing to purchase housing (members of this organization, enterprise) joined this cooperative, paying an introductory share and monthly fees. A queue of members of the cooperative was created to receive housing.
Upon completion of the construction of the house, the apartments were distributed among those on the waiting list, who continued to pay contributions until the Lender was reimbursed for the costs of constructing the apartment. In some ways, it was similar to a modern mortgage, but with an important difference - there was no extortionate interest rate.


But even after the payment of contributions, the apartment did not become the property of the tenant, it remained the collective property of the housing cooperative, it could only be sold to a member of this cooperative, and only by decision of the general meeting.
As a rule, an internal queue was formed in the cooperative to improve living conditions, and the queue in this queue was more important than your mutual desire. Therefore, it was only possible to return the entry fee, and even then with deduction of wear and tear.


However, cooperative construction was only 7-10% of what was required in the USSR, and naturally, everyone who wanted to purchase housing through cooperatives could not; there were huge queues to join them.
In the early 80s, they tried to improve the situation - within the framework of the state program “Every family has a separate apartment,” about 100,000 housing cooperatives were organized, but due to subsequent restructuring and other changes in the country, many of them were completed only by the end of the 90s, so people had to wait more than 10 years to receive their housing and often pay significantly extra.

In addition to cooperatives, housing was built by the residents themselves. Individual construction was especially developed in the early 50s. After the war, the country experienced a very difficult housing situation, especially in cities that were bombed or were part of the war zone. It was considered lucky to get a room in a hostel, and even more so in a communal apartment.
The housing construction complex was not initially designed for mass housing construction; for this reason, especially in small towns, all families who wanted it were given plots for RENT for the construction of individual houses. It was not difficult to obtain such a plot back then, and it was encouraged.
It was enough to provide information about the family composition, place of residence and work of the applicant, and write an application, and the issue was resolved in a matter of days. The size of the plot varied depending on the specific conditions - in more or less large cities - 4-6 acres, in regional centers and small towns and villages it could be 10-15 acres.


However, it was impossible to build just anything on this site: it was necessary to obtain from the city executive committee, from the architect, a design for the house (usually several standard options were offered to choose from), or submit for approval the design of the house to be built.
After approval of the construction project, you could get an interest-free loan for construction, which could amount to up to 70% of the required amount and was repayable within 10-15 years. But there was one catch, if you suddenly decided to change your job, then the loan had to be repaid within 6 months.
The spending of the loan was controlled, and it was also controlled where the materials for construction were taken from - documents for all construction materials and products (invoices, paid bills, etc.) were checked twice a year. The documents were to be kept by the owner of the house until the loan was repaid.


The built house (but not the land under it) was the individual property of the owner and could be sold by him to anyone at an agreed price, or left as an inheritance or gift at his discretion. Unless, of course, our lucky heir had the desire to register there. It was impossible to own housing but not register in it.
But already in the 60s, due to the development of state housing construction, it became difficult to obtain land for individual construction; they were given to large families, distinguished people, and, through great connections, to their own people. It was almost impossible even for workers of the party-Soviet bodies to obtain such a plot in more or less large cities.
After the death of Brezhnev, under Andropov, an attempt was also made to expand individual construction, but by the beginning of the 90s it also failed - plots began to be sold rather than issued, and they became even less accessible to ordinary people.

And now we come to the main method of acquiring housing in the USSR - receiving housing for rent from the state or enterprise on a first-come, first-served basis.
Public housing was departmental and executive committee, that is, it could be obtained at work (through the department, from its housing stock) or at the place of residence - in turn in the district and city executive committee.
Departmental housing was received by employees of fairly large enterprises and organizations, at the place of residence - employees of small city or regional organizations that do not have their own housing stock, as well as some categories of people who were given housing according to separate laws (Heroes of the USSR and those equivalent to them, women awarded medal “Mother Heroine, Honored Workers of the Arts, and so on).

The procedure for registering, in principle, was almost the same - it was necessary to collect certificates about the composition of the family, available housing, a description of the applicant’s place of work, and submit all this along with an application to the housing commission of the executive committee or enterprise. The commission reviewed the documents of the applicant for housing, and made a decision on whether to register him or not.
They could refuse if there was an area per family member in the available housing that was larger than the norm when placing on the waiting list - in the 70s the norm was 7 square meters per person, and in the 80s it was 9 square meters. Some categories of citizens were entitled to additional space, such as teachers with an academic title, architects, but not all, but only members of the union.


It should be borne in mind that the norm was determined from the so-called living area - the area of ​​​​living premises, without taking into account utility rooms - that is, the area of ​​​​the kitchen, bathroom, hallway, and so on were not taken into account. That is why in Soviet plans they tried to reduce them as much as possible.
After the decision on registration was made, if it was departmental housing, the person was informed about the decision made and under what number he was placed in the queue, but if he joined the city queue, the documents were sent to the executive committee.
What did the enterprise's housing stock consist of? All large enterprises were allowed to build housing for their employees at their own expense. At the same time, many factors were taken into account - the importance of the enterprise, the availability of housing stock, the prospects for the development of enterprises, the need to attract additional workers, and so on.


The possible time frame for obtaining housing also depended on many factors - at some enterprises it was necessary to wait several years to receive housing, at others it was possible to obtain an apartment within a year or two, or even in several months.
For example, in Moscow or another large city it was very difficult to get an apartment - you had to wait for decades, but in the periphery, especially during the construction of new enterprises, it was possible to get housing very quickly, up to several days after getting a job.
In addition to the regular queue, at enterprises and executive committees there were so-called preferential queues - so-called benefit recipients were placed in them. Those in these queues received housing much faster than regular queues.


The executive committee's housing stock consisted of houses that were on the balance sheet of the executive committee and were being built for it, and also for the city, each enterprise (including housing cooperatives) had to give 10% of the housing it built.
The procedure and standards for obtaining housing from the city were almost the same as at the enterprise, but the lines there were usually much longer.
Here I would like to consider two issues that are usually raised when discussing housing problems in the former USSR.

The first concerns the very possibility of obtaining housing, and has two opposing opinions: some say that it was almost impossible to get housing in the USSR, others say that it was quite possible, housing was provided quite quickly. Paradoxically, both of these statements are true.
It was very difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to obtain housing or expand living space for employees of small organizations that do not have their own housing stock, located in large cities - various research institutes, design institutes, and so on.
At the same time, during the construction of new factories, power plants, and in new cities on the periphery, it was not difficult to get an apartment. But changing jobs in these cities was also difficult. The USSR thus tied workers to enterprises not only with registration, but also with housing.


The second question concerns abuses in the distribution of housing. Of course, there were abuses, and in the late 80s there were already numerous cases of illegal allocation of apartments for money. It should be taken into account that separate houses were usually built for party functionaries.
Without going into discussions about how ethical this is, I will only say that these houses were more comfortable than housing for ordinary people, and even for this reason, functionaries did not really ask for housing in ordinary houses.
And lastly, housing could be inherited from your parents only if you were registered in it. In all other cases, you could not inherit housing or received it with the encumbrance of the obligatory surrender of your current home.


There were loopholes here. For example, you could get a divorce and register with elderly relatives under this scheme - after their death, you became the owner of their home.
In the USSR, there was also official (temporary) housing, in which, for example, military personnel or housing office workers lived. It was service apartments in non-residential buildings that attracted janitors to Moscow. After 10 years of service, the apartment immediately became permanent living space, so the housing office tried to relocate the janitors more often.
The “right to housing” was written into the Constitution of the USSR in 1977, so formally they could not be evicted anywhere in the USSR, and forced relocation was also prohibited in the period from September 15 to April 15, but no one stopped anyone from evicting them to a dilapidated place. Which is what was practiced.

She was different. As sad as it is for me to agree with the communists, apartments were cheaper in the USSR. Moreover. To determine exactly how much cheaper the apartments were, I called my grandfather now. Who bought a one-room apartment in a housing cooperative in 1978.

Grandfather, somehow, lives in St. Petersburg, like me. The apartment, accordingly, was purchased in Leningrad.

So here it is. The cost of that apartment was 6,300 rubles. And the salary of my grandfather, an electrician, was then about 270 rubles. That is, the apartment cost my grandfather two years’ salary.

For comparison, now the salary of an electrician is twenty-five thousand rubles. A similar apartment costs about three million. Or, if you count it in years, ten years of work.

It would seem that the difference is obvious: two years or ten years. Five times!

However, now there are nuances. Do you think your grandfather came to Gorzhilobmen or whatever it was then, took out an installment plan and moved into the apartment?

Those who lived under the USSR are now smiling. Of course no. This is capitalism in Russia - you give money, you get an apartment. This was not possible in the USSR.

At that time, my grandfather already had a three-room apartment (also in Leningrad), in which he lived with his wife and one of his daughters. My grandfather gave this three-room apartment back to the state. And the state allowed my grandfather to buy a one-room apartment, and gave my daughter, I don’t know under what conditions, two rooms in a communal apartment.

That is, simply put, the grandfather did not buy an apartment for 6300. The grandfather exchanged three rubles in the city center for a one-room apartment in a new area plus two rooms in the same center. And he paid extra, relatively speaking, for the increased area.

If you ask your older relatives, I think you should make sure that each purchase of an apartment comes with some conditions. Someone was waiting in line. Someone made an exchange. And so on.

A simple argument. If apartments in the USSR really cost a worker’s salary for two years, do you think how many families would live in communal apartments? After all, it couldn’t be simpler: Graduated from a vocational school, got married, bought an apartment in installments, and moved in. (At this point, the smile of those born in the USSR becomes wider.)

By the way, the communists themselves readily acknowledged problems in this area. Let's give the floor to Comrade Khrushchev (thanks to friend mftsch for the informative quote):

I got married in 1914 when I was twenty years old. Since I had a good profession (locksmith - V.Ch.), I was able to immediately rent an apartment. My apartment had a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a dining room. Years have passed since the revolution, and it pains me to think that I, a worker, lived under capitalism in much better conditions than workers lived under Soviet rule.

(By the way, there is an opinion that before 1917 this very “housing issue that spoiled Muscovites” was much less acute. It would be great if one of the friends told us what happened to apartments and salaries under the Tsar).

In short, I have not yet seen a clear answer to the question: “if apartments were so cheap in the USSR, and if it was enough to wait to get an apartment, why by 1992 were there so many people “over thirty”, “over forty” and even “over seventy” lived in communal apartments”? Wasn’t their whole life long enough to “wait” for this?

In general, apartments in the USSR were indeed cheap, but these cheapest apartments were not enough for everyone. This is where the queues arose, in which people stood for decades. If tomorrow we sell new Toyota Camrys five times cheaper, at two hundred thousand rubles for a new car, there will also be a queue for them for many years. However, my heart tells me that this will not make them more accessible. Although we can then quite seriously tell our grandchildren: “in 2008, a new Toyota Camry cost 200 thousand.”

However, we must give the Soviet Union its due; motivated people could always bypass the queues somehow. For example, you could stupidly get a job in an office that gave apartments to its employees. The same builder, let's say. Then there was a good chance to get an apartment, not just before retirement, but, if you were lucky, within ten years.

OK. It was all flowers. Let's ask ourselves a more important question. Why, exactly, should apartments in Russia cost the same as in the USSR? Why do we compare at all?

Do you know the three rules of real estate? Location, location and location. One-room apartment in St. Petersburg - three million. Exactly the same one-room apartment three hundred kilometers from St. Petersburg - five hundred thousand. Well, I’m not talking about Moscow anymore.

So here it is. An apartment in the USSR is an apartment in the USSR. With all the consequences, such as difficulties with selling and leasing, as well as the lack of normal stores within a radius of thousands of kilometers. And an apartment in Russia is already normal real estate in a normal capital country. In the capital country, where, I draw your attention, there is a large influx of migrants from nearby countries.

It was the masses of people who dreamed of leaving the USSR. On the contrary, they are coming to Russia now. Because Russia is a very attractive country, both for work and for life.

Simply put, comparing prices for apartments in St. Petersburg and Leningrad is no more correct than comparing prices for apartments in our St. Petersburg and in American St. Petersburg.

Well, you know. The USA also has its own St. Petersburg, in the state of Florida. With a population of 250 thousand people. And in this city, which locals call St. Petersburg, there are also apartments that are probably worth something.

But no one is surprised that a square meter in Florida costs differently than a square meter in North-West Russia, right? These square meters are located in different countries.

So it is with the USSR. Apartments in the USSR cost relatively little, since the Soviet Union was relatively unsuitable for living. Less suitable than Russia, in any case. And for the same reasons, apartments in North Korea are cheaper than in South Korea. This is completely natural.

However, what do we say to a North Korean who brags about the affordability of apartments in his country? The question is rhetorical. We will tell the North Korean that cheap apartments in North Korea are its shame, not its pride.

Exactly the same can be answered to a nostalgic communist. Cheap apartments in the USSR are a disgrace for this country. After all, a low price for apartments usually only means that these apartments are located in a problem area.

In Soviet times, not everyone could afford to buy a cooperative apartment. However, the state and the stable ruble prevented Soviet citizens from defaulting. The revival of housing cooperatives, which the authorities have started talking about, can be a real help to people, but only if there are clear “rules of the game”

Photo by ITAR-TASS

Moscow/Khabarovsk. March 25. IFX.RU - In Soviet times, a cooperative apartment was perceived by an ordinary Soviet person in the same way as now, probably, the average Russian perceives elite housing. With the price of an apartment in a housing cooperative being approximately 3,000 rubles and a down payment of a third of the cost, not every resident of the Soviet Union could afford such a luxury. But still, even taking into account the fact that in the late 80s and very early 90s, cooperative apartments were significantly more expensive than in the “terry” Soviet times, they were still a dream of citizens, unattainable for many.

Elite housing in Soviet style

As a rule, joining a cooperative was a privilege for fairly highly paid people. People who went “to the cooperative” to earn money “in the North”; executive or party workers, the creative elite, as well as a special caste of people who worked abroad had a chance to join the cooperative. The best gift for a young family was the parents' contribution to a housing cooperative. In general, owning an apartment in a housing cooperative indicated that people belonged to a higher class, whose average Soviet level, and a bride or groom with a cooperative apartment or parents who could pay for it were generally considered a “star couple” for the average person.

After the Soviet period ended, the time passed for housing cooperatives. They were replaced by shared construction or payment for housing through an investment contact, when a citizen bought an apartment in a building that had not yet begun to be built. It happened that construction ended in nothing, and people who had only investment contacts on their hands were left without housing and without money.

In contrast to these schemes, the mechanism for constructing and purchasing an apartment in a housing cooperative was transparent and understandable to everyone. The shareholder contributed a certain portion of the cost of housing, after which the cooperative purchased an apartment for him. From that moment on, a member of the cooperative had the right to use housing, that is, he could live in an apartment, but the housing remained the property of the cooperative. The co-op member continued to make contributions to pay off the remaining cost of the home.

In Soviet times, there were rare cases when people could not pay the cost of an apartment. The remaining share was paid over years, but not over decades, as most mortgage programs now provide. The unshakable ruble and the state, which guarded the interests of citizens, did not allow personal defaults of people. As a last resort, a person always had the opportunity to exchange a cooperative apartment with an unpaid share for a state one. Apartments in cooperatives were valued higher than those provided to citizens by the state, so such an exchange was beneficial to its owner.

Now Russians do not have many options to buy a home if they cannot pay the entire amount at once. The most common option in recent years was the mortgage, but with the onset of the crisis this part of the banking and real estate business actually died. Housing and savings cooperatives, which can to some extent be correlated with the old Soviet cooperatives, have not become widespread in modern history. It was much more profitable for construction companies in a growing market to attract bank loans for the construction of commercial housing than to build housing in installments using savings programs.

Back in the USSR…

But the crisis has changed the realities of the construction market. The Russian government has come very close to the issue of reviving housing cooperatives in the country.

In Russia there are enough citizens who are able to purchase housing on preferential terms, and therefore the Russian government is considering the issue of reviving housing cooperatives in the country, said First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Igor Shuvalov.

“For all this, during 2009 we will have to create a regulatory framework, carry out organizational work to form citizens who are ready to purchase housing into cooperatives,” he said at a meeting in Khabarovsk, where the draft anti-crisis program of the Russian government was discussed.

Shuvalov recalled the scheme for this form of housing construction in the form in which it existed in Soviet times.

“That is, cooperatives are formed, and local authorities allocate land plots for these cooperatives, and state banks provide loans to those who will participate in construction. There is nothing new in this, we are simply modifying the experience that existed in the Soviet Union to those modern realities, that exist, and to the banking opportunities that exist,” the Deputy Prime Minister noted.

The only thing left to clarify is this. If in Soviet times the state guarded the interests of shareholders of cooperatives, and therefore the leaders of cooperatives and construction organizations could not even think about any kind of cheating with prices and property rights, then to what extent will this practice be observed now?

Nowadays, it is not uncommon for a developer who has started construction to sell an unfinished property to other companies, as a result of which shareholders may lose the right to the meters they paid for in it. And these are not all the incidents that became possible thanks to the rather “murky” housing legislation of the Russian Federation. In addition, in Soviet times, when the ruble was “dead,” shareholders of cooperatives did not even think that they might be “asked” to contribute money beyond the agreed value, but now in shared construction, cases of additional collections are very common.

If the state, when creating a scheme for the operation of a housing cooperative, provides for all the conditions under which members of the cooperative will be protected from risks, often contrived by builders, then the wonderful idea of ​​housing cooperatives has a chance to be revived and prosper. It is quite possible that the expression “cooperative apartment” will once again enter the Russian lexicon, pronounced with aspiration and a hint of envy.