Housing alarm

Around 4.5 million Russians live in dilapidated or dangerous housing, and if this does not change in 5-7 years then the system will be on the brink of collapse, he addedExperts said the President’s verdict was slightly too pessimistic, but that utility services were not up to scratch for 60 per cent of the population.The government introduced wide-ranging reforms in 2005 to the utilities and housing sector, but Medvedev’s outburst suggests the changes have not been successful.Rosstroi, a state-owned construction agency, was put in charge of housing utilities before the responsibility was transferred to the Ministry of Regional Development.‘We stopped calculating’“In 2002 we started calculating the cost of reform of housing and communal services, but when we reached a figure of 3 trillion roubles ($95.6 billion) we stopped calculating,” joked Sergei Kruglik, the then head of Rosstroi, in 2005, RIA Novosti reported.