Evil grin of market socialism: Flat owners to be evicted from homes for debts
96- 1.03.2013, 9:31
Flat owners, who don't pay their utility bills, can be evicted from homes beginning from March 2, 2013.
The new Housing Code suggests stricter measures against owners of the flats who don't pay their utility bills.
As a Minsk-Novosti correspondent was told in the Minsk City Utility Company, in accordance with article 155 of the new code, a debtor's flat may be offered for public sale under the court decision. The debt will be collected from the sale price and the rest sum will be spent by the local executive bodies on buying another flat to the former owner. It will be smaller and worse and may be located outside Minsk.
The owner with a 6-month debt will have an opportunity to pay the debt or sell the flat within 12 months.
The same measure will be applied to the owners, who were brought to administrative responsibility for violating the rules of using housing or service premises three or more times during a year.
“This measure has the aim to warn and remind the owners that they should comply with the rules and regulations of the housing legislation,” says Maryna Smirnova, the head of the legal and personal department of the Minsk City Housing Company (MCHC).
However, the MCHC does not rule out the possibility of selling privatised flats.
As of February 1, 2013, 14,663 owners of flats have utility debts at a sum of 3,885,000,000 Belarusian rubles (6,032 owners have debts of 2,106,000,000 rubles). 377 owners didn't pay utility bills for more than 6 months. Their total debt was 519 million rubles.
District utility offices already made the first steps: more than 600 notices reminding to pay debts were sent to debtors. As a result, 20% of non-payers paid their debts in full, 5% - paid a part of the debts.
Under the old Housing Code, only tenants living in state-owned flats could have been ordered by a court to move to a smaller flat for big debts to the utility company or could have been evicted without offering another flat for numerous violations of the rules of using residential property. These measures remain in the new code too.
