Implementing Housing Allowances in Russia

This text argues that privatisation of state and municipal housing in the Russian Federation is only one of the key elements of housing policy and that it is necessary to plan now for the future of the rental sector. It explains housing reforms to date (August 1992) and offers specific recommendations by: describing current rents and their relationship to family income; establishing the feasibility of creating a programme for increasing rents and introducing payment of housing allowances to the population (using simulations conducted for Moscow City); and analysing alternative versions of a housing allowance programme to determine their effectiveness and results. This book also puts Russia's housing allowance programme into a broader context by contrasting the circumstances in which housing allowance programmes are being introduced in Eastern Europe with conditions existing in North America and Western Europe in the 1970s, when allowances were introduced in many of those countries.