Homelessness in Russia

[jerry_01]

The homelessness is often associated with poor economic condition of homeless and near-homeless people, and one of the components, which helps correctly describe homeless condition, is the environment. In this context, the following update is offered.

Russia has a third more billionaires, but people take no pride in this
10.03.2011

MOSCOW, March 10 (Itar-Tass) -- Over the past year the number of billionaires in Russia has increased by 30%, and Moscow has become number one city in the world as to the number of billionaires resident in it, overtaking New York by this parameter. This, experts say, merely underlines the glaring social inequality in the country, which cannot be seen in any other post-socialist states in Europe.

In the ranking of the richest people of the world, published by the American magazine Forbes, there are 101 billionaires from Russia. Last year the number of billionaire Russians increased by 30%.

In other words, every twelfth dollar billionaire on the planet has a Russian passport. There are more of them only in the U.S. (413) and China (115).

Moscow has regained the title of the world capital of billionaires, lost in the wake of the fall of commodity markets in 2008. The Russian capital city is a home for 79 billionaires, while the American metropolis - for just 58. The combined wealth of the richest residents of Moscow is equal, according to experts, the 375 billion dollars. In just one year their number grew to 21, Forbes representatives said on Wednesday.

[jerry_01]

Today Russian smiling President Dmitry Medvedev once again spoke out against the scourge of corruption and the lack of rule of law in the Russian Federation. It was typical kind of speech we come to expect from him: forthright, unobjectionable, but insincere only from the perspective that other elements of the system around him continue to refuse reform in favor of preserving self-interest.

But Medvedev has a special, if not complicated, relationship with the corruption problem. For example, a few months ago he met with chief of the control administration of his administration Konstantin Chuychenko, who reported that about $860 million had been lost to corruption on housing and utilities in the Central Federal District in the past two years alone.

If we do some math, taking into account all eight federal districts (jerry's comment: Russia is devided into 8 adm.districts), then we get closer to understanding the sheer immensity of corruption under the Putin-Medvedev governance model. And as such, we might understand the value of Medvedev's words about the necessity to fight back.

Corruption in the sphere of the housing and utilities sector has always existed, but never in history has it reached such a large scope. This past January the Russian federal attorney general reported that numerous municipalities were unilaterally and unlawfully exaggerating service tariffs of the housing and utilities sector. And what changed? Nothing!

The fact is that every year from the first of January in Russia traditionally the rates for services in the sphere of the housing and utilities sector are raised. And nobody has ever explained to people why this takes place.

In November of the year 2010, conducting a session of the presidium of the State Council in Syktyvkar (jerry's comment: a city in the Asiatic part Russian Federation, the capital of national autonomous republic, a combination of the equivalents of the U.S. federal state and a large reservation), Medvedev pronounced that the housing and utilities sector needs to be reformed with intelligence. He warned that otherwise a catastrophe will befall the country as a result of the disorder and corruption of this sector.

I'm afraid that Mr. Chuychenko could have reported to the president with the same kind of success about how in all the spheres in the country - there is laxity and disorder. While we're on the subject, Chuychenko did tell Medvedev about how, bureaucrats, apparently, are cashing in on kickbacks for certain kinds of construction materials, acquired for the construction projects for the Winter Olympic games, slated for the year 2014 in Sochi.

"We identified unpleasant facts, connected with price-formation for granular materials - sand-and-gravel mix, crushed stone", - said Chuychenko. As a check showed, the price for these materials grew from 360 to 800 rubles per ton, at the same time as on average throughout the country it comprises 250-400 rubles. "This doesn't squeeze through any gates", he said.

On account of the gates he overstated a bit: it squeezes through, oh how it squeezes through. Because the head corruptioneers sit not in the system of the housing and utilities sector, and not in the construction companies. You need to start from the very top: take a look at how and why the friends and acquaintances of Vladimir Putin suddenly became multi-millionaires out of the blue; what monopolists, ones like Gazprom, Russian Railroads, represent of themselves...

Last year representatives of the "Solidarity" opposition movement Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov published the report "Putin. Results. 10 years", dedicated to the results of the activity of Vladimir Putin during the time of his sojourn in power in the capacity of president, and subsequently prime-minister of Russia.

In this report they write: «One of the black results of the rule of Vladimir Putin became the plunging of Russia into a hopelessly lightless abyss of corruption. Worst of all is that in Russia corruption has become factually legalized in the upper echelons of power. Old friends of Putin's, who before his come to power were nobodies, -- Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk, the brothers Rotenberg -- have been transformed into dollar billionaires. It is unsurprising that the country is beginning to copy the model of behavior of its leader. Already in the year 2000 we were found in 82nd place in the Transparency International (a non-governmental international organization for the struggle with corruption and researching the level of corruption in the whole world) global rating of the level of corruption. The country was strongly corrupted.

In the year 2009 Russia rolled down substantially lower -- to 146th place. Our neighbours in the rating -- Cameroon, Ecuador, Kenya, Sierra-Leone, East Timor, Zimbabwe. Even Georgia outstrips us a lot in the rating -- she is in 61st place. Over the years of Putin's rule the social stratification in the country has grown by 15%. In the crisis year of 2009 the number of dollar billionaires doubles, in so doing 18.5 mln people are living below the poverty line, unemployment reached a level of 9% while the wages and salaries of budgeteers [civil service employees--Trans.] are frozen.

Against the background of a deficit budget and screaming poverty multi-billion frauds are being implemented: a winter Olympiad in the subtropics in Sochi; the gas pipelines «Nord stream» and «South stream», as well as «Altai»; the conducting of an APEC summit on the island of Russky...»

As we can see, Chuychenko merely confirmed to Medvedev something that is long known to all.
robertamsterdam.com/2011/05/grigory_pasko_medvedev_and_corruption.htm

[jerry_01]

Maintenance and refit of the existing total housing in the Russian Federation would require about 10 trln.rubles (about US$330 bln.): more than 3.5 trln.rubles (US$120 bln.) for the repairs of the housing, and more than 6 trln. (US$210 bln.) for the repairs of the infrastructure, Mr. Putin, Russian Prime Minister, stated on May 23, 2011, addressing the meeting of the local Regional Council in Pskov, West Russia. This cost seems to have grown by 20% as compared with the figures that the same Prime Minister has mentioned about three months ago, on March 4, that is 4.9-5 trln. roubles (US$170-175 bln.), when addressing the discussion of the state expense for modernization of the municipal housing in Russia in 2010-2020.

[jerry_01]

jerry01's comment: Below is a report from a Russian newspaper about the misuse of mental treatment in the property issues. I confirm that the Moscow police largely use the threat of psychiatric treatment against whom doesn't want to cooperate in their property misappropriation schemes. Here, in this piece, the issue is the mental clinics while actually the issue is the use of mental clinics by various police and/or public supervision services.


Case 1.Galina Kozlova, then 62, was drinking tea in her Moscow apartment when psychiatrists called by her sister broke down the door, handcuffed her, dragged her to a car and took her to a psychiatric hospital.

Her 81-day treatment included copious doses of psychoactive drugs and beatings by her doctor, she said. The treatment ended when she agreed to sign away her land plot and a share of her three-room apartment to her sister.

"The doctor told me when he beat me: 'Don't be stubborn. Give away your property rights to your sister,'" Kozlova, now 72, said in a recent interview.

She left the hospital in 2001, only to be ruled mentally incapable by a district court. A higher court canceled the decision after an independent psychiatric examination confirmed her mentally sound, but by then the damage had been done. She has spent the last decade suing for the reinstatement of her property rights, but to no avail.

The story is far from unique.

Relatives, authorities, neighbors and even psychiatrists who want to grab an elderly person's apartment often ask courts to declare the person mentally incapable in order to be appointed their guardians, said Tatyana Malchikova, head of the Civil Commission for Human Rights in Moscow, which has tracked abuse in psychiatry for the past 11 years.

She was echoed by independent psychiatrist Emmanuil Gushansky, whose professional experience spans more than half a century. "It is convenient to declare people mentally incapable to deprive them of … their property," Gushansky said in an interview.

A 1992 law grants psychiatrists the right to hospitalize people involuntarily if they pose a danger to themselves or others, or if their physical health faces "significant damage" without urgent intervention.

Anyone can complain to police or psychiatrists about anyone whom they think needs hospitalization, Malchikova said.

Paramedics can deliver people to mental health facilities before checking whether they need hospitalization if the patient is deemed as dangerous, said lawyer Yury Yershov, who defends victims of psychiatric abuse.

Psychiatrists have to justify their actions before a judge within two days. But that gives them more than enough time to drug a patient, making him or her look psychologically unstable when brought to the courtroom, Malchikova said.

The patients get free, state-provided lawyers, but the lawyers are notoriously prone to side with the psychiatrists, Yershov said.

As for the judges themselves, they nearly always rule against the patients, Malchikova said.

Even more often, the hospitalized patient is never brought to the court hearing at all and does not know that it was held, Malchikova said.

Kozlova said she learned about the trial that ordered her hospitalization only several years after it took place.

The Kremlin addressed the problem in April, after years of pressure from the UN Human Rights Committee to uphold the rights of psychologically unfit people. President Dmitry Medvedev signed into law a bill that banned courts from declaring people unfit based only on a psychiatric examination, obliging judges to listen to the patient or his or her lawyer and hand a written court order for hospitalization to the patient in person. Moreover, patients ruled mentally unfit now have the right to appeal the diagnosis.

But that does little to help cases that date back to earlier times. Kozlova, for one, lives with relatives because her sister — who could not be reached to comment for the article despite repeated attempts — refuses to let her back into the apartment, ignoring a court order, Kozlova said.

The sister has actually convinced court marshals that she isn't blocking Kozlova's entry into the apartment, leading them to close the case, she said.

"I am tired," Kozlova said, unable to hold back tears. "There is such an evident and insolent crime out there, and no one wants to deal with it."

Boris Stremyakov, head of the Izmailovo district branch of the Federal Court Marshals Service, refused to comment on the affair, which he said pre-dates his appointment.

A Moscow Times reporter also studied documents and interviewed three other elderly Moscow residents and one Moscow region resident who were forcefully hospitalized, declared mentally incapable by courts at the request of relatives, and then lost the rights to their apartments to the relatives.

Kozlova and two other women, Tatyana Truntayeva and Lyubov Andreyeva, have been offered legal assistance by the For Human Rights group, while the other two, Lidia Balakireva and Viktor Goryachyev, have received support from The Civil Commission for Human Rights.

Case 2.In a typical example, 58-year-old Lidia Balakireva was declared mentally incapable and hospitalized in 2007 at the request of her daughter after she refused to sell her share in their apartment for a price far below market value.

District police appeared to have had a hand in the affair, because an officer invited Balakireva to go with him to the police station to "write an explanation," she said. When she arrived, she was put in a holding cell and handed over to psychiatric ambulance, purportedly for a check at a hospital. But then she was kept at the hospital for treatment.

A court later ruled the hospitalization illegal and confirmed her psychological health as normal. But Balakireva has since been living in an apartment where she works as a caregiver, saying she fears that her daughter will have her hospitalized again if she returns home.

Case 3.Tatyana Truntayeva, 70, was officially registered as suffering from a psychoneurological disorder in 2007 at the request of her son-in-law after she refused to sign away her apartment and dacha to him in her will.

The designation, registered at a neighborhood clinic, means Truntayeva can't sell or give away her property and her will is considered invalid in the eyes of the law. As things stand, her daughter will inherit her property, and if the daughter, who is gravely ill, dies, the property automatically goes to her son-in-law.

Case 4.Lyubov Andreyeva, 69, was declared mentally incapable by Moscow region psychiatrists at the request of her son, who wanted her apartment and dacha.

The son and his wife evicted Andreyeva from her property by beating her and threatening to kill her, she said. She currently lives with relatives, one of whom told The Moscow Times that she considers Andreyeva mentally sound.

Case 5.Viktor Goryachyev, 70, was sent to a psychiatric hospital in 2004 at the request of his wife, eight years his junior, after he said he wanted a divorce and asked her to move out of his three-room apartment.

A male nurse handcuffed him and beat his face on a table, even while admitting Goryachyev was psychologically "adequate" and there was no legal reason for hospitalization, Goryachyev said.

A higher court overturned the order for Goryachyev to be hospitalized. He then divorced his wife and managed to evict her out of the apartment — but only after two years of court battles.

01 July 2011
By Natalya Krainova
The Moscow Times newspaper (e-version)

[jerry_01]

July 27, 2011
Moscow police discovered another camp of illegal immigrants in the forest belt in western Moscow, near Ryabinovaya street. 72 persons have been detained according to Russian news agency RIA Novosti citing the Moscow's Head Office of the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation (in brief, the police).

People from Central Asia, Armenia, Belorussia and Ukraine were sleeping in the ground in the open, near the railway. They used cloth mats as bedding, and were working in the nearby construction site.

Now the detained people are in the police presinct waiting for a decision that will be taken according to migration law of the Russian Federation.

russianrealty.ru/tidings/market/41022/

[jerry_01]

It's environmentally friendly, including local carnivorous. One of the abandoned villages is in the Penza oblast (the oblast is similar to a U.S. state, but with Chinese legislation)
englishrussia.com/2011/11/06/the-last-villager-of-leonidovka

[Milky_Way]

I am fascinated with Russia! Touring your country is on my bucket list.

[jerry_01]

You are welcome, Milky Way. The best route is San Francisco - Vladivostok by ship or plane, then by car to the west. Don't forget yellow Kalina (Russian car). Here is a video of how one of our big shots was touring in the Russian Far East in the yellow Kalina few years ago (watch the video up to the end and guess, which one out of three then-President/now-PrimeMinister was in). youtube.com/watch?v=bfs0E3xBCi8 Here is one of many video replies to the President's tour, a video of "federal-class highway" in Khanty Mansiisk, accompanied by a Russian singer Shevchuk youtube.com/watch?v=K0NM0EdihCU&feature=related song "I go to my homeland".

[Milky_Way]

I read somewhere that Putin drives (or is driven in) a black Audi with the license plate 007 and that all of traffic is shut down when he travels to and from to the Kremlin daily.

[caliban]

There's a video on the Internet of a group of kids going around killing homeless people in the forrest (they were supposedly environmentalists and didn't like the homeless eating the wild animals) it's nasty stuff. It reminds me of human nature and to keep aggressive towards people even in a lowly marginal state such as homelessness.

[Milky_Way]

I couldn't find that particular video (not that I really want to watch a snuff film), but I did find many references to it.

I ended up watching YouTubes last night of homeless children in Russia, such as "The Children of Leningradsky." Russia is in a sad state of affairs.

I agree with you about human nature. It is easier to be bad than good, and it takes a conscious decision in every moment and situation to walk in the light instead of the darkness.

[jerry_01]

According to the Department of Housing Policy and Housing Stock of Moscow, by the end of 2010 the total housing stock of the city was 3.89 million flats, out of which about two million flats are rented. Residing in rented flats is becoming unsafe, a spokesman for the Department said.
Estimated 100 to 150 cheap lodging-houses will be needed. The authorities are planning to relocate 50 percent of the lodgers in Moscow, that is 1 mln flats, into such accommodations.

kp.ru/daily/25805.4/2785338

[jerry_01]

MOSCOW, February 13 (RIA Novosti)
The severe cold snap gripping most of Russia has already killed at least 215 people and injured over 5,500, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

“Over the January 1-February 13 period, 5,546 people in Russia suffered from hypothermia and chilblains, including 154 children. A total of 3,382 people were admitted to hospitals, including 52 children. At least 215 people died,” the ministry said in a statement.

The low termperature on Sunday night in Moscow was near the record for February 12, minus 28.5 degrees Celsius (-19 Fahrenheit).

The biting cold compels Russians to make excessive use heating devices such as electrical space heaters and furnaces, which increase the fire risk.

The current temperatures in Russia are 7-12 degrees below normal. The cold snap even extends into the normally warm North Caucasus with temperatures there plummeting to minus 20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit). Siberia and the Far East are currently in a deep freeze at minus 40 degrees Celsius.

en.rian.ru/russia/20120213/171294633.html

[jerry_01]

Re-post from AP

By LYNN BERRY, Associated Press

KRYMSK, Russia (AP) — The floods that washed through southern Russia and killed 171 people followed storms that dumped five months of rain in a matter of hours. Still, President Vladimir Putin has spent three days trying to persuade residents that the flooding was an act of nature and not the result of government negligence or worse.

Some persist in believing, against all evidence, that the city of Krymsk and its 57,000 people were intentionally sacrificed to prevent the flood waters from damaging Novorossiysk, a major Black Sea port essential for exporting Russian oil and grain.

This deep distrust of the government poses a challenge to Putin, who depends on the support of ordinary Russians across the country to counter the growing challenge in Moscow to his 12-year rule.

At the very least, the flooding has Russians once again questioning the government's ability to keep them safe. Still fresh in their memory are a string of disasters — from the bungled response to the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000, to the wildfires that swept seemingly unopposed through a swath of western Russia in 2010, to the capsizing of an overloaded river boat that killed more than 120 people last year.

The Emergencies Ministry acknowledged Monday that it had failed to warn residents about the flash flood that turned Krymsk streets into swirling muddy rivers and filled one-story homes practically up to the ceiling in the middle of the night. Many of the 171 who died were elderly residents unable to escape in time.

A total of 29,000 people in Krymsk and the seaside resort town Gelendzhik lost all of their possessions, while about 300 homes in Krymsk and 100 in Gelendzhik were damaged beyond repair, according to government figures released Monday.

After torrential rains dropped up to 300 milliliters (12 inches) of water late Friday and early Saturday, the flooding inundated Krymsk so quickly that that residents said they suspected that water had been intentionally released from a reservoir in the mountains above the city to prevent the dam from being breached.

The suspicion was that this had been done to protect the Novorossiysk port, which is part-owned by the government and Transneft, the state monopoly that runs the oil pipeline system. The reservoir lies in mountains situated between Novorossiysk and Krymsk. It was unclear whether the port was in any danger.

The government denied the sluices had been opened and, in an effort to convince the skeptics, the Krasnodar region governor arranged for a group of residents to fly over the reservoir in a helicopter. He even arranged a second flight over a wider area after they complained that they had not seen enough the first time. Two members of the group were shown on television saying they were now convinced that the reservoir had not been the source of the flooding.

This was the same conclusion reached by a well-known local environmentalist, Suren Gazaryan, who has opposed the governor on other issues. Gazaryan studied the area around the reservoir and the high-water marks along a network of mountain streams, posting the photographs and his conclusions on his blog.

Still, prominent Moscow journalist Oleg Kashin, who was in Krymsk, said on Kommersant FM radio that none of the residents he had spoken to believed it was the weather alone that caused the flooding.

"It's not that the government's version of the events differs from that of the victims, but the thing is that it's normal in Russia to distrust authorities in everything — be it a natural disaster, elections or soccer," Kashin said. "I'm sure that Krymsk will get repaired, compensations will be paid and the dead will be buried. But you have to agree that this will not make this crisis of confidence go away."
[...]

Lynn Berry reported from Moscow. Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow also contributed to this report.

[jerry_01]

27 December 2012 Last updated at 22:41 GMT

The cold weather is continuing to take its toll in Ukraine, where 90 people have now died because of the cold weather.

Temperatures as low as -23C (-9F) and heavy snowfall have left the capital, Kiev, and most of the country under a thick frozen layer.

Hundreds have been treated in hospitals, the majority of those people being the homeless.

Andriy Kravets reports.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20854479

[jerry_01]

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: February 8, 2013 (extract)


[...] The dire housing situation [...] could easily become a major sore point for the [Russian] government in 2013. Consider some of the issues raised in this translation of an article published in Gazeta.ru gazeta.ru/comments/2013/02/01_e_4949913.shtml


Public discontent with housing sector is reaching a critical level. The government, meanwhile, isn’t promising anything but further cost increases.

According to VTSIOM, in January 2013 “the situation in the housing sector” was the first problem among others that Russians were aggrieved with: it was mentioned by 54% (last year the figure was 47%, and in January of 2009 – 29%). People have less anxiety about the low standard of living (46%), the situation in the health sector (43%) and corruption (29%), not to speak of the “state of morality” (21%).

It is not surprising.

Russian housing and communal services’ quantity and quality are on the level of the past century, failing to surpass Soviet standards.

But instead of almost symbolic prices of the Soviet period, people pay nearly western-level costs that grow steadily year by year.

Citizens have always been assured that that paying full cost for substandard utilities, energy, heat and water will eventually boost the standard of living and freely competing providers will avoid inflating prices.

As in other sectors, market competition in the housing is nearly crushed. The housing business, merged together with government, freely imposes its full set of low-quality services for absurdly high prices.

The densely corrupt bureaucratic environment of our housing sector discourages any innovation, even reasonable innovation, and uses its position against the people. Installations and subsequent regular upkeep of the electricity, water and gas room meters has turned into a way to take extra money out of homeowners. Each year, increasing prices for gas and electricity enrich the monopoly providers without any efforts on their part to improve services.

Everyone feels good in such an atmosphere of irresponsibility, incompetence, and easy money, except for the +100 million Russian citizens.

In the provinces, another increase of tariffs will hit the peoples’ wallets particularly hard. The silent mass discontent, so far only recorded by polls, may not remain silent for very long.

Furthermore, it is interesting to know that there is a structure in charge of zhilkomhoz (Housing). And it turns out that they are not sitting idly by.

The main structure in this area is a state corporation called the ”Housing Reform Foundation” . It is said that the foundation would only help its own employees by paying extremely high salaries. And there’s more. In 2013, this corporation promises to distribute 1.16 billion rubles among Russia’s regions as “a bonus for the effective implementation of the regional target programs and the effectiveness of housing reform.”

This amount of 1 billion looks serious. But only as long as it is not compared to the approximately 2.5 trillion rubles which ordinary people spend on the utilities.

The upper levels of the power hierarchy are now entirely focused on issues that are more interesting and important for them personally. Thus, growing problems in the housing sector are entrusted to regional and municipal authorities. If they did not “reform” the sector, they could have tried at least to slow down the price increases.

Local budgets are over-extended. Almost the entire package of Putin’s generous campaign promises was shifted to the regions, including higher salaries for teachers, doctors and cultural workers. The federal government does not want to transfer real revenue sources to the locals because it does not cope well with its own costly undertakings. And the only fruitful idea that exists today is to increase real estate taxes starting 2014, and to use this money to strengthen local budgets. But in reality it will only mean additional exaction of money from the housing, which will increase the burden that people already have.

Housing faces the same problems as other areas the bureaucratic machine supervises directly or indirectly.

The government cannot and does not want to improve the service system and therefore preserves the low quality. At the same time, the appetite of the bureaucratic machine and its affiliated businesses alongside all the rising costs. It is a sort of a business game that is played as long as consumers do not reach the limit of their patience. As for the housing, in many ways the limit is quite close.

robertamsterdam.com/2013/02/russias-housing-crisis-a-driver-of-public-discontent