For bankers and the authorities behind them, mortgages are a great way to milk millions of people endlessly. But what is our interest here?
Vladimir Putin again decided to shake the imagination of Russians. This time he promised to solve their housing problem once and for all. “We have a historic chance in the foreseeable future, perhaps for the first time in the entire history of Russia, to resolve, radically resolve the housing issue. And we must not miss this chance,”the Russian President said during a video conference on the Russia 24 TV channel.
The fact that the president made this optimistic statement at the very moment when the Far East was shaken by massive protests after the arrest of the Khabarovsk governor Sergei Furgal, and Elder Sergiy modestly asked Vladimir Vladimirovich and Patriarch Kirill to transfer secular and spiritual power to him, of course, a coincidence … However, the topic raised by the president still deserves a separate consideration.
The chance that the head of state said about is, of course, a good thing. The question is whether it is possible to implement it. As it was sung in the cartoon "Treasure Island", "a chance is not a paycheck, not an advance" …
In fact, speaking seriously, there is no chance of solving the housing problem in modern Russia. The system is not the same. Putin, as usual, only makes catchy political statements, provoking the electorate with them for a while. The immediate implementation of the next "large-scale" project (large-scale, as it turns out later, mainly in terms of the amount of budgetary funds allocated for this, used, as usual, by Ocean's 13 commercial companies) descends to the government level. The latter gets a less pleasant mission - to clarify and concretize what the beloved leader really meant.
Here's a similar story this time. The head of the Russian government, Mikhail Mishustin, said back in May that the rapid construction of high-quality housing is expected within the framework of the national plan for economic recovery. The details of this remarkable plan were also communicated. It followed from them that, naturally, we were not talking about the free distribution of housing to all those in need, but about the same mortgage. That is, if you want a new home, carry your money. Moreover, given its cost, the debts will have to be paid for the next couple of decades. Lose your job - do not exact! Lose both an apartment (house) and already invested hundreds of thousands or millions of rubles, and you will also find yourself in debt to good banks, through which this wonderful program will be implemented.
In general, the idea is great. The only question is - for whom …
The state of citizens will, of course, support it. We always have the last hope in him! To fall at the feet of the authorities, to cry out their burning tears for him, demanding protection from all kinds of covetous people is sacred. And the fact that the state in our country for the last three decades has been acting only as one of the market players - we will not expand on this, because this is a terrible state secret.
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In practice, in this particular case, the role of the state will be to slightly lower the interest rate on the mortgage. Miraculous parameters have already been announced - 6.5-8%. Actually, that's all state support. In the "damned geyrope", by the way, 1-2%. But we will not talk about this either - why be upset in vain?
So, Putin's remarkable plan "to fundamentally solve the housing issue" is for millions of Russians at the very moment when many of them have already lost their jobs due to the crisis or may lose them in the coming months, harnessed to mortgage bondage and thus lend construction industry. In other words, they will try to bring the economy out of the crisis with the hands of those who are already feeling so bad.
Something all this reminds. Yes, those "dashing nineties". Then the Russians, who managed to hide at least something under the mattress after the liberalization of prices and the catastrophic devaluation of the ruble in 1992, carried these savings into inflated "investment funds", the creation of which was also actively encouraged by the new Russian state. After that, most of these offices burst like soap bubbles.
Now about the quality of new housing. We not only guess about him, but also know well. Some of the "lucky ones" have already purchased apartments in new buildings or harnessed to a mortgage. Yes, there are more kitchens and corridors than in the Khrushchev buildings. But the number of rooms depends on the thickness of your wallet, not on the number of your family members. But the walls and ceilings … They are not accidentally called cardboard. And the audibility is appropriate.
A friend says: she came to her master for makeup. On the occasion of the pandemic, the girl is receiving clients at home, in her apartment in a new building on the tenth floor. Suddenly an aria is heard. It is audible perfectly! “Don't be alarmed,” says the cosmetologist, “this is our neighbor from the fifth (!) Floor, an opera artist, who sings …”
Well, now about the main thing. In fact, it was possible to really solve the housing problem in Russia back in the early 2000s. But on one condition - the preservation of the socio-economic system that was in the Soviet Union. It should be recalled here that according to official data, by the end of the 1980s, about 80% of Soviet families lived in their own house or apartment. But it's not only that. A house is a house, like an apartment is an apartment. We agree that when a family of four adults (say, parents and two adult children) live in a small one- or two-room apartment with a total area of 30-35 sq. m - this is not at all the same "solution" to the housing problem, when each of the family members owns their own home or at least a separate room.
Right now in the USA, for example, the demand for tiny houses, even by Soviet standards, has sharply increased. On the American TV channel TLC, a very popular program is about how young and not very couples, single and family people are increasingly buying there not mansions and apartments of hundreds of square meters, as was the case in the old days, but mobile homes with an average area of 20 -25 to 40-45 "squares". Moreover, this footage includes a bathroom with a kitchen, an entrance hall, and a "second floor" with a very low ceiling, where only a bed is usually located …
And by the way, this is a good illustration of one of the reasons for the protests that swept across this country - for an increasing number of Americans, the prospect of someday becoming the owner of decent housing goes beyond the horizon of the current generation.
For the last 30 years, new Russia has followed, in fact, the same Western way of solving the housing problem. It consists in the fact that, at some stage, citizens are often harnessed to life-long mortgage slavery. The only difference is that the interest rate on housing loans in the rotten and morally decayed West is several times lower than in "highly spiritual" Russia. Do not like the mortgage - your business. Meet old age in rented accommodation.
Of course, we are partly saved by the fact that in Russia (as in other countries of the former USSR) there is still a fairly significant percentage of Soviet rentiers. These are those who live on the income from additional living space, which was formed after they received apartments in the Soviet years from the following calculation: a two-room apartment for three, a three-room apartment for four, a four-room apartment for five family members, and so on. Since then, if one of the relatives registered in this housing has died, and before that they had successfully exchanged it for two or even three separate apartments, some of this additional real estate is rented out.
If the housing issue went the same way as in the Soviet Union, when citizens received apartments for free, then yes - the promise of one of the secretaries general to provide each Soviet family with an apartment or a separate house by 2000 could really be realized. Let me remind you that at that time, for example, even a mother and son or a father and daughter living in a one-room apartment were registered for the improvement of living conditions. In today's system, there is simply no reason for queuing up to improve living conditions, such as “heterosexual family members living in the same room”. A family, for example, of four, living in a "kopeck piece" also had the right to receive additional living space. At the same time, in order to get in line for receiving an apartment, it was not required to provethat you are poor - the apartments were distributed simply according to the appropriate norms. Not by footage, but at the rate of one person per room (if we were not talking about spouses).
Now Putin's promise to solve the housing problem cannot be realized, not because there is little construction. Housing is just full - realtors know how many apartments in new buildings have been empty for years. It's just that for the vast majority of people, the mortgage (commercial) way of solving the housing issue is not raised financially. At best, this is credit slavery for many years, and more often for decades. For bankers and the authorities behind them, mortgages are a great way to milk millions of people endlessly. But what is our interest here? In this story, the citizens should only care that they seem to want to cheat us again.
