In the Moscow region, employers will be required to build housing for migrant workers

Companies building warehouses and distribution centers in the Moscow region will be able to agree on new investment projects with the regional authorities only if they undertake to build dormitories for migrants on the premises, follows from the order of the regional governor Andrei Vorobyov. According to the authorities, this will solve the problem of “rubber apartments” – businesses, however, differ in their assessments of the idea. Some companies provide housing for migrants even now and consider the new requirements excessive; others, on the contrary, would be ready to invest in larger “hubs” for migrants to live for 15–20 thousand people, but are asking the state for preferences for such projects.

The authorities of the Moscow region will oblige companies creating new warehouse complexes and distribution centers in the region to provide dormitories for migrant workers working for them. The order of the Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov “On the organization of housing arrangements for certain categories of persons, including those who are foreign citizens or stateless persons” was published by his administration last week. As follows from the document, the regional government must offer companies that hire migrant workers to provide them with housing – sometimes in specially built hostels, hotels and dormitories. At the same time, the parameters of housing created for migrants must comply with the standard for providing temporary accommodation for workers, also published last week by the government of the Moscow region.

The standard applies to logistics complexes, warehouses and wholesale distribution centers with an area of ​​30 thousand square meters. m – we note that over the past few years there has been a boom in such projects in Russia (for more details, see “Kommersant” dated July 7, 2023).

Investors will have to provide housing for at least 70% of the occupied population based on at least 4–6 sq. m per person depending on the type of accommodation. Housing for migrants must be located on the premises of the facility where they work and comply with the sanitary requirements established by law for dormitories and hostels. The designed premises must also be suitable for housing security; they must be equipped with a video surveillance system, which can subsequently be integrated into the unified regional system of the Moscow region “Safe Region”.

As Vladimir Gerasimenko, first deputy head of the regional main department of regional security, explains, new requirements for investment projects of companies will help solve the problem of “rubber apartments” and illegal hostels in the Moscow region and improve the crime situation. “As a rule, migrants rent housing near their place of work, therefore, in the residential sector adjacent to large objects of attraction for foreign labor (in our case these are mainly logistics centers), a certain discomfort is created for the local population. An example is Kotelniki near Moscow, where the majority of workers at the Sadovod market have chosen to live,” he says, citing statistics from law enforcement agencies, according to which migrants commit 7.5% of all crimes in the Moscow region. “If employers accommodate their foreign workers centrally, in service dormitories, it will be easier to control them there. And most importantly, contacts with the local population will be kept to a minimum, according to the “dormitory-work-dormitory” principle,” he notes. The Moscow region, along with Moscow and St. Petersburg, is one of the centers of attraction for labor migration – in the region, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, more than 500 thousand foreign citizens are registered with migration authorities. In total, about 3.5 million migrants were working simultaneously in the Russian Federation in 2023 (see Kommersant, February 1).

As a source in the Moscow region government told Kommersant, marketplaces and retail representatives learned about plans to charge businesses with the construction of hostels for migrants on February 4 at a meeting with the governor. In particular, according to Kommersant’s information, representatives of X5, Magnit, Ozon and Wideberry were present. However, officials were not able to convince all of them of the advantages of the new approach to organizing workers’ housing. “Ozone has been providing all out-of-town and foreign employees of logistics facilities with places in dormitories for several years, as well as transfers to their place of work. All dormitories in which our employees live are officially registered and have all the necessary documentation,” the company’s press service reported. At the same time, a Kommersant source in the logistics market notes that the company is concerned about the requirement in the future to locate housing on the territory of their facilities: “This is not always possible, in addition, it will require additional costs that will have to be compensated by the consumer.” “We also have no confidence that the concentration of a large number of visitors in a closed area will allow us to control them better, not worse,” he said. The press services of X5 and Magnit did not answer Kommersant.

At the same time, according to Sergei Popkov, GR director of the Wideberries company, “the standards developed by the government are a modern and civilized way of interacting and handling labor resources.” According to him, previous studies of the housing preferences of nonresident citizens of the Russian Federation and foreign workers showed that most of them “would like to live in rented rooms with a change of linen and regular hotel-type cleaning.” According to him, such projects will also create an opportunity for “construction developers to realize themselves, which directly correlates with the creation of new jobs, the opportunity for growth and development.”

In particular, as two sources who were present at a profile meeting with the governor told Kommersant, a representative of Wideberries proposed the following project to the authorities of the Moscow region: to build a large hub in the region for 15–20 thousand people, from where migrants would have easy access to several logistics centers. The volume of investments that would be required to launch this project in 1.5–2 years is estimated at 10 billion rubles—under the terms of a public-private partnership, companies from the construction industry could become partners in it. The Wideberries press service did not comment on the company’s projects in such detail.

If “in reality everything happens as they promise on paper,” says independent migration expert Vadim Kozhenov, hostels would be an acceptable solution. On the other hand, he argues, if migrants for some reason refuse to work under such living conditions, then employers will not be able to put pressure on them. “Logistics and retail workers are short of a large number of people, and companies are unlikely to be able to demand anything from potential employees,” he says. In addition, a significant part of the migrants from the Moscow region work in Moscow, and the new requirements will not affect their resettlement.

Chairman of the regional public organization “Nur” Alimamad Boymamadov reminds that it is necessary to take into account the interests of local residents of the areas where migrants work. “Imagine – several thousand people come and go from work every day, for example, to the Wideberry warehouses in Elektrostal. How do the locals feel when they see this crowd? Of course, centralized accommodation and travel would solve this problem,” he says. In addition, according to him, places of compact residence of migrants could become centers for their integration into Russian society – centers for studying the Russian language, history and culture of Russia could be opened on their territory, and preventive conversations could be held “to prevent violations of Russian legislation.”

Anastasia Manuilova