“I’ll stay with you”: an orphan who did not receive an apartment came to the administration of Ussuriysk

“The management of orphanages does not care what happens to their pupils”

Orphan Angelina Zvereva has been waiting for housing required by law for almost three years. And then she decided to take radical measures. I came with a suitcase to the administration of Ussuriysk: “I’ll live with you here, there’s nowhere else.”

A video of an orphan near the city administration building went viral on local public pages.

We contacted the heroine of the video.

Angelina Zvereva is 21 years old. For three years, the girl has been lurking around strange corners – she sometimes lives with friends, sometimes she rents rooms, and sometimes she spends the night in the hallways. In November, a Primorye court ordered officials to give the girl an apartment. But the authorities did not have any available housing.

“There are a lot of orphans all over the country who need apartments. But when there is a positive court decision, people seem to get housing faster. Apparently, this is not my case,” says Angelina. “When I left the orphanage, they told me that there were more than 300 orphans ahead of me in the queue for housing. And they added: wait. The management of orphanages does not care what happens to their pupils, although in theory they should help orphans until they turn 23 years old. But no one cares. This is the time…

The interlocutor admits that after leaving the orphanage, she accumulated a decent amount in her savings book.

— My mistake is that I spent the money quickly. While growing up in an orphanage, I didn’t see anything good. Therefore, I wanted to buy a phone, and fashionable things, and go to the sea. As a result, I spent part of the accumulated funds. I got a job and rented a house. But she didn’t pull it out. She lived with her brother for some time until he left the city. They didn’t take me back to the orphanage. She was sheltered by a classmate. I lived with her for two years. But she has a family, children, it’s inconvenient to embarrass her. I was renting a house again. There wasn’t enough money. I suffered for three years. Sometimes I’ll live with some people, sometimes with others, sometimes in the hallways, sometimes somewhere else. And so it is until now. As a result, I couldn’t stand it and came to the administration of Ussuriysk with a suitcase that contained all my things.

In the video, Angelina stands near the administration building: “This is my second day on the street, I don’t know what to do. I came to the administration, which should give me an apartment. It’s fun living in Russia.”

– At first I stood on the street, no one came out. Freezing, I went inside. “Everyone looked at me and whispered,” Zvereva continues. “When I said that I would stay here to live, some woman came out and began to intimidate me with the police. I answered: well, call the police, I came to get the housing I was entitled to.

After the video spread online, the guardianship authorities contacted Angelina and offered her a room in a dormitory.

“I arrived there and I felt sick: the walls were cracked, the beds looked like they were in prison, the toilet was smeared with shit. I am a clean girl, but they treated me like a scourge. Mostly adults live there, old enough to be my mothers and grandmothers. They also told me that teachers who have nowhere to live are settled there. My companions were sincerely surprised by my refusal to accept their offer: “This is the only thing we can give.” And I noticed that one of the women who offered me this hostel was holding an iPhone 15 in her hands, probably, and her apartment was decent. So let her move into this “bedbug infestation” herself, at least for a couple of days.

Later, Angelina received a call from the guardianship again. And they offered… to return to the Ussuri orphanage.

“I didn’t have any options, it’s not like staying outside in the cold,” the girl adds. “Now they tell me that new houses are supposedly being built, and they will provide me with an apartment in April. It’s strange where they came from, if just recently I heard that there was no available housing.