Russians were offered to pay for housing and communal services in a new way: the climate factor intervened

“You won’t understand who owes whom – either the tenants to the management companies, or vice versa”

Winter has not yet truly come into its own, and tenants are already wondering how much it will cost them to pay for heat. This is the most painful issue in the entire communal apartment. Expensive – especially in cold weather! Approximately 60% of the total debts for housing and communal services are occupied by heat. However, the authorities decided to experiment – so far only in Moscow. The capital was allowed to recalculate heat consumed in winter not based on the results of the previous year, but to take a longer period: 3 years or even 5 years. It is possible that this winter the experience will be extended to other regions of the country.

Today, payment for heating can be made in one of two ways: during the heating season (then in winter the amounts in bills are higher, sometimes several times!), or evenly throughout the year – then the amounts are the same every month.

In the capital, the second method has long been chosen. The basis is the volume of heat consumption for the previous year. And after its completion, residents are issued a one-time adjustment payment based on actual consumption.

In recent years, winter temperatures have varied dramatically. After an extremely warm winter in 2020 and a cold 2021, monthly payments in 2022 increased by 25-50%.

According to the head of the practice of utilities, energy and real estate management of the Moscow Bar Association “Arbat” Sergei Sergeev, the capital has even established a standard for heat consumption per square meter of area per month. It is 0.016 Gcal.

However, this approach is not accepted in all regions of Russia; in some regions, citizens pay for heat specifically in the winter months – which often gives rise to various scandals there. Utility companies sometimes charge tenants astronomical sums and it is unclear where to go – to the courts with a claim against the Criminal Code or to the cashier, to pay for the “chain letter”.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of this month, the State Duma adopted a law allowing the Moscow authorities to independently establish the specifics of calculating payments for heating in terms of the average monthly volume of heat consumption. According to this document, the city government will be able to determine the specifics of the payment for heating utilities based on consumption volumes not for one year, but for several years. This has never happened before in municipal practice. According to some experts, this law will be able to level out jumps in payments.

“It doesn’t change from year to year, winters are different,” explains Sergei Sergeev. – For this reason, there are jumps in payments for heat. If we consider a more distant period, say, five years, then such sharp changes will be smoothed out.”

However, experts also see “pitfalls” in the new law. Thus, the chairman of the Housing Union, a member of the Housing and Communal Services Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, Konstantin Krokhin, believes that any increase in the recalculation base further confuses the already opaque situation in the utilities sector. And that in this case, a period of one year is better than five years.

– When the public is told that the recalculation is carried out over 5 years, no one will remember what kind of winter it was in 2018 or 2019: cold or warm. And you will no longer understand who owes whom – either the residents to the management companies, or, on the contrary, they are obliged to return the money to the citizens…

Another point confuses him in the new document: the right of city authorities to finance resource supply organizations from the budget in the event of a sharp excess of the heat standard.

“Sometimes they drown in the spring, like in January or in February,” he reasons. – We appeal to utility companies: reduce the energy supply! They don’t hear us. Now, according to the law, the budget will now pay for the squandering of resources. It’s good that they are not people. But it, the budget, is ultimately formed from our taxes…

Krokhin is confident that this position is in favor of the utility monopolists. In his opinion, questions about paying for heating probably would not have arisen at all if each apartment had individual meters for accounting for heat consumption. How they stand for electricity and water today. And there would be no need to divide gigacalories into winter and summer. But such a prospect, taking into account the state of engineering networks, is considered only in the distant future.