Tymophiy Melnychuk walks closely by his two small children when they play in the yard behind their Soviet-style apartment building in Kyiv’s Troeshchyna district. There are holes half a meter deep where the kids, ages 1.5 and 3, can twist their ankles. The benches are broken and the swings are rusty. Last summer two girls were injured because they fell from broken swings in Kyiv; earlier one girl died in Zhytomyr Oblast’s Berdychiv for the same reason.
Melnychuk, 30, has filed numerous requests to the local utilities office (called ZHEK in Ukrainian) to repair the playground behind the non-condominium apartment, but nothing has been done.
On the opposite side of the city, Tetiana Montian doesn’t worry about the maintenance of her apartment building and grounds. The 41-year-old lawyer and her neighbors in Pozniaky district formed a homeowners association, or condominium (known as OSBB) in 2011, a new form of housing management in Ukraine. Now every morning the concierge greets her at the front door, their yard is beautifully flowered and they no longer have problems with stinky garbage bins.
But it’s difficult for apartment owners to organize into a condominium because it’s hard to keep track of the owners. There is no database showing apartment ownership and it takes a bureaucratic trip to ZHEK to get the information.
But Melnychuk, the husband of Kyiv Post contributor Nataliya Makogon, may soon be able to get the apartment’s problems fixed, in collaboration with his neighbors. The Ministry of Regional Development, Construction and Communal Living introduced a measure that would let residents manage their own apartment building if a simple majority of them agree.
Rather than depending on ZHEK, a condominium system lets residents control their expenses and decide autonomously how to spend funds efficiently for things like elevator replacement, playground painting or putting locks on the entrance doors.
Owners of more than 16,000 of the approximately 200,000 apartment houses in Ukraine, or 8 percent, have already formed condominiums. That number may grow next year, as Ukrainians will have open access to a database that lists apartment owners in their complex, making it easier to organize.
Grzegorz Gajda runs the International Finance Corporation’s Ukrainian Residential Energy Efficiency Project, which promotes the communal reform. He is sure Ukrainians are ready to implement the system, but he warns that owners are taking on more responsibility and decisions will affect every owner’s bill.
Gajda gave this example: “Once we decided to put new gateways for the garage in the courtyard. We were so excited with the idea that we even didn’t ask about the price. We were so surprised to have it done soon. But when we got our bills we were even more surprised, as the price was raised considerably.”
Civic activists are promoting condominium conversion and helping residents implement the change. Tetiana Boiko, the coordinator of the housing utilities service program at Opora civic movement, thinks owners will discover the benefits if they become more proactive.
“The most important thing the owners should know is the fact they can obtain all services they want for less money,” Boiko said. Owners may pay higher maintenance bills because they can get more services independently than they can through the ZHEK system. But some Ukrainians are ready for it.
“I’m OK to pay higher utilities bills, if it helps to keep our house in good condition,” Melnychuk said. “I’d gladly welcome a condominium.”
Montian cautioned that the change is not a cure-all. The majority of Ukrainians still deal with what she called a “corrupted utilities mafia” that extorts bribes because “citizens have little knowledge of property rights,” Montian said. The owners of her condominium had to hire bodyguards to gain control of their warehouse space from representatives of the ZHEK, she alleged.
ZHEK has often been accused of corruption. For example, the head of Kyiv’s Podilskiy ZHEK once was accused of taking Hr 3,600 bribes for giving third-party access to an owner’s storage space below the roof, according to the prosecutor’s statement.
Montian said she believes most apartment owners are ready to form a condominium, but they have to fight against entrenched bureaucrats. Owners in her condominium had to persistently confront the ZHEK system to make the changes now perceived as improvements in their building, she said.
They installed a gas meter in their building, which is impossible to do with ZHEK system. She pays Hr 505 a month for her 140-square-meter apartment, and Melnychuk pays Hr 650 for an apartment half that size.
“Now we’re proud even of our garbage bins,” Montian said.
