According to this project, the solution to the housing problem of Russians should be transferred to market rails. As its authors note, this circumstance favorably distinguishes the new project from its budget counterparts implemented in the years of Khrushchev and Gorbachev. The participants of the "round table" were ready to argue with the developers of the project. As it turned out during the discussion, the actual project itself is not yet available. There is only a name and several federal targeted programs "Housing 2002-2010".
"This is a quasi-program called a national project," said Vyacheslav Glazychev, a member of the Public Council under the President of Russia, "and there is no housing policy in the country that could become its basis and guarantee its implementation." “As always, some talk,” the well-known analyst continued, “they say, we will establish control over the implementation of the project. They will establish control, but they will not do anything. The classic “blowing the whistle” has already been ensured in the localities”. In order to avoid this sad classic of the genre, the need was noted to unite the professional community capable of giving an expert assessment of what was happening, and by joint efforts of serious analytical work with a clear definition of the required amount of public investment in the launch and implementation of the project and the proposal of specific technologies for using funds, any money can help us."
The host of the "round table" Vice-President of the Union of Artists Nikolai Pavlov supported Glazychev, figuratively defining the task - the creation of a "vertical of professionals". Pointing to the hooligan character of the new Urban Planning and Housing Codes, in which a number of clauses contradict the goals of the national project, Glazychev emphasized that, in fact, one cannot do without politics. The call of the President of the Union of Architects of Russia, Yuri Gnedovsky, remained unheard of to focus on discussing specific professional problems of developing a typology of affordable and comfortable housing - to talk about possible number of storeys, footage, layouts and norms. The architects discussed the size of the housing market, affordability criteria, the share of construction in the country's GDP and the failure of the mortgage project.
MCA President Viktor Logvinov indicated that against the planned to be commissioned in 2010, 80 million square meters. m per year worth $ 40 billion, the real capacity of the domestic housing market is at least 300 million square meters. m per year ($ 140 billion). “Just as the auto industry created America in its time, the housing market can create Russia today,” said Logvinov. Moreover, for Russia, the designated footage of new buildings, which is beyond the current pace of market development, is actually only 10% of the existing housing stock, which catastrophically quickly fails and requires replacement. As noted by the vice-president of the RAASN Alexander Stepanov, today in the country the annual growth of living space per capita is 0.2 square meters. m, while in China, huge in terms of population, this indicator per capita is 4-5 times higher. At the same time, out of 5 million Russians in need of housing, only 140 thousand can afford to purchase it today, which is less than 5%. That is, the reason for the stagnation in the domestic housing market has been correctly diagnosed - inaccessibility.
The formula for the affordability of housing all over the world, as Vitaly Anikin, deputy director of MNIITEP recalled, is the equivalence of the cost of a square meter. m and minimum wage (minimum wage). If the minimum wage is more than the cost of the square. m begins construction boom, if less - stagnation of housing construction, which is happening now in Russia. However, the mortgage, chosen as the only mechanism for the implementation of the affordable housing program, which will be subsidized by the state (interest rates and down payment), will not solve the problem on the necessary scale. Now the mortgage is able to improve the solvency of only 5-10% of the already sufficiently wealthy Russian population, able to take out a mortgage loan even on such unrealistic conditions that are offered by Russian banks today. By the way, when discussing mortgage alternatives during the round table, the experience of Canada was recalled. There, the interest rate on mortgage loans was initially set at 2%, which made it possible to provide housing for the least well-off part of the population in dire need of better housing conditions, and then it was raised to 9%.
The situation here is twofold. On the one hand, the experience of all countries of the world shows that the introduction of mortgage lending leads to an increase in prices. If you look at the development of the mortgage market in Russia over the past two years, you can see that the volume of the mortgage market in the regions and prices for local housing are growing in direct proportion. So, in the Central Federal District, the market grew by 11%, prices - by 13%. On the other hand, the mobilization of financial resources is always faster than the mobilization of material resources. And if the building complex of Russia is not ready to work out the attracted mortgage resources, the result will be directly opposite to the expected one. And the domestic building complex, as noted by the participants of the round table, is clearly not ready. For example, the Russian producers of cement from the planned for commissioning by 2010 80 million square meters. meters of housing (not to mention 300 million sq. m.) can provide cement for the construction of only half - 40 million sq. m. m. The maximum that they promise is to increase the volume of cement production by a quarter. Also, the Russian construction complex, as noted by the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Industry, Construction and Science-Intensive Technologies Martin Shakkum, will inevitably have problems with steel in connection with the Russian-Ukrainian conflicts. The issue of electricity and gas limits is also unclear.
In contrast to the authors of the national project on housing, experts cited the program of leaving communal apartments implemented in the 60s of the last century as a positive example of a well-thought-out state policy. When the course for the construction of panel houses was taken, a production base corresponding to the scale of the task was created: hundreds of house-building factories, precast concrete factories, quarries, etc. As a result, 110 million square meters were leased in the USSR. m of housing per year. Today, as noted by the participants of the "round table", the plans of officials are at odds with the real state of the construction industry. The share of construction in the country's GDP, as noted by Viktor Logvinov, is 4.9%, while, for example, trade is all 48. And investments in construction account for only 4% of the total investment. And with such scanty indicators, such global tasks are set.
The participants were in solidarity in the priority of the development of the construction industry, rather than mortgages in the implementation of the national housing project. With a weak construction market and an unregulated regulatory framework, the release of mortgage resources into the market can provoke a collapse and ruin the national idea of housing development in Russia.
