The Ministry of Construction proposed a new system of payment for housing and communal services

The Ministry of Construction plans to change the system of payment for housing and communal services. Now the department is working on creating a system of special accounts to raise funds to pay for communal services. They want to accumulate the money of the owners on such accounts, instead of directly transferring funds to management companies (MCs). The management companies, in turn, will have to send this money only to those organizations that supply water, heat and electricity to homes.

Whether the system of payment for housing and communal services will become more transparent and whether consumers will be able to save on a communal apartment, MK understood.

The housing and utilities sector decided to add transparency. We are talking, in particular, about resolving the conflict of interests of consumers of resources and the misuse of their funds by management companies. The Ministry of Construction is developing a system of special accounts for accumulating utility bills on them. The bottom line is that the money to pay for the “communal” will not go to the “common pot”, and their purpose can be tracked individually.

The initiative to create special accounts did not arise yesterday. At the end of October 2022, the government approved a strategy for the development of the construction industry and housing and communal services until 2030. In it, in terms of managing apartment buildings (MKD), such a task was set as the development of a building management model. One of the models can be a special account for each MKD, Irina Gentsler, director of the Urban Economy direction of the Institute for Urban Economics Foundation, told MK.

The essence of the proposal is that, in accordance with the law, the owners of apartments own the common property of MKD. Like it or not, but you will have to bear the cost of maintaining the house: this is the law.

Today, all the money that payers transfer immediately goes to the settlement account of the managing organization, which may have several apartment buildings in operation at once. The catch is that such an account is a common wallet for several MKDs at once. It is impossible to track exactly what the money of a particular payer was spent on.

So, now it is proposed to allow the owners of MKD apartments to collect funds for current repairs, management and maintenance of their building on a separate account.

“The account can be opened both for a regional operator and for a management company. This is a nominal account that any person can open, and the money that is stored on it belongs to other people. In other words, the money of the owners, and the account for them was opened, for example, by a management company.

The invoice will make it possible to pay an advance, if it is stipulated by the contract, and then payment will be made only upon the fact of the work done by the contractor,” continues Genzler.

Meanwhile, in any house there are unscrupulous payers, and when switching to a new payment system, this fact can create additional difficulties for the owners.

“The new model of special accounts will make it possible to reduce the costs of gray schemes used by management companies by up to 20% – by attracting affiliated contractors and carrying out work “on paper”. In order for the special account to work, you need an active council at home, which is far from being available everywhere. Approximately 40% of houses have a chairman of the council of the house, who is able to ensure control over the activities of the Criminal Code, ”says Pavel Sklyanchuk, an expert of the Popular Front, a member of the Public Council of the federal project “School of a Literate Consumer”.

However, not all experts support the initiative of the Ministry of Construction. So, for example, the chairman of the Housing Union, a member of the committee on housing and communal services of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, lawyer Konstantin Krokhin has a negative attitude towards the proposal to introduce a special account. According to him, the new form of payment was not discussed with market professionals, with independent associations.

According to Krokhin, the creation of special accounts can provoke a drop in the quality of public services. So, for example, now, no matter how consumers scold the management companies, but it is they who know what this or that MKD needs. In the case of the introduction of special accounts, the Criminal Code will, figuratively speaking, “hands tied”. It will be possible to spend the funds of the owners only to pay for the services provided, but if the house needs something more than that, then there will be nothing to pay extra for this “extra”.

According to Krokhin, this means that in fact they want to remove the management companies from the management of apartment buildings.

“In the future, it will turn out that management companies, if such changes occur, will not be able to be responsible for the timely provision of services with the wording “we were not given money,” he said.