Introduction

Abstract

This book is about policy-making and change in the sphere of housing policy in Russia. The change in this sphere over recent decades has been dramatic. The Soviet Union made a commitment to the provision of standardised housing to its citizens which it failed to meet due to the ever-increasing demand, with a near quarter of families placed on massive housing waiting lists by the end of the 1980s (Goskomstat SSSR, 1987: 519). The early post-Soviet housing reform sought to liberalise this sphere. This involved making the majority of Russian citizens owners of their homes with full responsibility for day-to-day costs of utilities and maintenance as well as the long-term renovation of multi-apartment buildings where the majority of the Russians reside.1 A state-sponsored Agency for Home Mortgage Lending (AHML) was created to kick-start and develop mortgage lending in the country. The architecture of the housing policy thus introduced was characterised by some authors as ‘American’, due to the essence of the adopted measures and the participation of policy advisers from the United States in the restructuring of the Russian housing sector during the 1990s (Zavisca, 2012). Some of these new policies, however, were delayed in implementation by economic factors (Starodubrovskaya, 2003) and by strong opposition from Russia’s low-income groups via their representatives in the national parliament (Cook, 2007).