Future of Ekaterinburg: Back to the Slums

29.06.2010 — Analysis

New is well-forgotten shabby old

The strategic plan for development of Ekaterinburg has been complemented with a dedicated program. According to Vice-Mayor Vladimir Kritsky, the objective is to rehabilitate about 2 million square meters of old residential dwellings by 2020.

"There are entire neighborhoods built up with low-cost houses. Their useful life ranges from 50 to 70 years; in other words, it expires in 10-20 years. Something must be done about this. We cannot just demolish them - the city funds are not sufficient to accommodate such a number of residents", V.Kritsky stated.

The officials expect that private investors will act as a major sponsor of the project and the city will do its bit: the municipal government owns up to 15% of the floor space in these houses. However, the authorities, as usual, have neglected the opinion of the Ekaterinburg citizens - it is highly doubtful that anyone will be willing to buy apartments in the top-lofts of the dwellings that are on their last legs; and there are good reasons for this.

Khrushchevkas are three-to-five storey panelized houses that mushroomed in the USSR when Nikita Khrushchev had the reins of government. The houses were nick-named "khrushch-slums" (derivative from "slums"), as the quality of the houses left much to be desired.

Apartments in these houses have a combined bathroom and poor sound proofing; thin panel walls have a low heat-trapping ability (apartments are cold in winter and hot in summer). Those days, the Soviet leaders planned part of the buildings as temporary housing. The design service life of khrushchevkas is 50 years, but, judging by the commitment of the authorities, they are going to stay in service at least for a century.

Experts are unanimous in their opinion: living in khrushchevkas is dangerous to health. Viktoriya Shtelmakh, an environmental engineer of the Engineering and Project Center 16, informed that the building materials that were used in the construction of these houses contain asbestos in the concentration levels hazardous to health. "In my opinion, it is more feasible to focus on construction of the houses built from safer types of materials that are widely available at present rather that reconstruct hazardous houses ", V.Shtelmakh thinks.

You don't learn wisdom by the follies of others

Ural experts think that the new idea of the city administration is self-defeating, as investors are unlikely to agree to investing money in invariably unprofitable business. The fact that the rehabilitation of khrushchevkas will entail sizeable costs has already been proven. 

In the 90s, on Belorechenskaya Street in Ekaterinburg, the pilot project was put into operation when a building of the kind was built up with upper storeys. It was the time when the city administration was encouraged by the French experience of upgrading of abandoned five-storey dwellings and conversion them into decent economy-class houses. However, in the Ural capital the rehabilitation process lingered on due to lack of money. Eventually, the reconstruction was completed through the funds given by the residents who got tired of living at the construction site. After that, for 10 years the city cooled down its enthusiasm for the similar projects.

No lesson has been drawn from the experience of Moscow and St. Petersburg where reconstruction of khrushchevkas was deemed as inexpedient.

"In the city on the Neva, the city administration made an attempt to rehabilitate and build up such houses, but the idea was nipped in the bud. In Moscow, panelized khrushchevkas are torn down and replaced with high rises. People are provided with temporary housing and, later, move into apartments in new buildings; the remaining apartments are sold bringing profit to developers", explains Anatoly Vasiliev, Deputy Director of the Union of Builders of the Sverdlovsk Region.

Note that in contrast to Moscow, Ekaterinburg has no accommodation reserves to relocate the affected residents. The city has temporary allocated public housing; however, it is doubtful that people will be able to tolerate this temporary housing for more than a few days. The residents of the old house on Roza Luxemburg Street 8/10, which collapsed in August 2009, refer to the temporary accommodation given them by the city administration in no other way but as a "doghouse": electricity outages, lack of water, and insanitary conditions. As a result, most of the "relocatees" took off to stay with their friends and relatives.

Admittedly, taking into account the situation with the Belorechenskaya project, the issue of relocation is most unlikely to be on the agenda. The residents can stay in the building during its reconstruction, which means that they, if fortunate, will have to tolerate noise and construction waste, to the full extent. If worse comes to worst - the construction work may end up with a tragedy: shabby structures being unable to support additional load will collapse.

"Reconstruction of khrushchevkas must be thought over thoroughly. In theory, of course, the buildup is possible, but each house needs an individual approach. If the building is located in the former floodplain, the foundation can fail to support additional load of built-up storeys. If the building stands on the rock, the situation is more favorable. However, in any case, all the piping must be replaces, as all the systems were designed for the existing house, and heat and water will not reach the upper floors. I think that new construction is the best option. Today, no one will build a 6 square meter kitchen, and in khrushchevkas you cannot make it larger no matter how hard you try to upgrade it", A.Vasiliev remarks.

"Khrushchev" investment, or Who needs it?

The most costly item in building up of khrushchevkas is installation of utilities. None of the experts questioned by "RusBusinessNews" was able to estimate the amount of the required investment; however, everybody is sure that expenses are going to be enormous. Taking into account that for construction of a standard cottage the installation of a 250-meter gas pipeline costs on average 700 thousand rubles and the installation of a 10-meter water line costs 130 thousand, in this particular case we talk about dozens of millions. In addition, heat insulation of façade walls, reinforcement of walls and foundations.

"The main problem with khrushchevkas is that, due to the expired "service life", they come apart at the seams. Therefore, major repairs are required before the house can be built up. The reconstruction and buildup of such houses require sizeable expenses, which, in my opinion, are senseless, states Maxim Petlin, a deputy of the Ekaterinburg City Duma. - Furthermore, khrushchevkas have become obsolete. The built-up storeys will look odd. I think that the city authorities should focus on large-scale economy-class housing construction. If the market receives apartments that are twice as cheap - at the price ranging from 15 to 20 thousand rubles per square meter, and mortgage lending is available, people will relocate from khrushchevkas, thus, the problem will be solved automatically".

Developers are also not sure about the feasibility of the idea. "Expenses will depend on the design solution. There is European experience of building up houses when the upper floors constitute expensive properties, for example, penthouses, but the conditions are absolutely different. In Vienna, in the downtown, within Ringstrasse, such construction is feasible, and such solutions are quite expensive - the upper floors are given for elite real estate, Gennady Chernykh, General Director of the PRED-Grupp Managing Company, points out. - In Ekaterinburg this solution is possible, for example, in the historical center of the city, in Lenin Prospekt. However, costs pertaining to the built-up storey can exceed the cost of one square meter in the house under construction, and there is no guarantee that they will be justified".

Kirill Lyashenko, Deputy General Director of Renova-StroyGroup-Akademicheskoye, also thinks that new residential construction is more profitable. The houses built with application of advanced technology will be more comfortable as compared to the older buildings with worn-out utilities.

Experts doubt that citizens will be interested in buying "top-loft" apartments. "I doubt that someone will want to invest money in old houses that are very shaky in their condition, even if their shell has been replaced. In the 60s, constructions regulations were different; today we have new standards. Developers find it more profitable to construct new houses rather than invest enormous funds in building up of older houses that are not marketable", Vsevolod Chaschin, General Director of the Blagodat Securities Investment Company, thinks.

Thus, the "slum" future in Ekaterinburg remains to be seen. If the city administration fails to find an investor to implements the new idea, we can hope that someday state-of-the-art houses will replace khrushchevkas.

Mariya Truskova