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Homelessness in Russia has been observed since the end of the 19th century. After the abolition of serfdom, major cities experienced a large influx of former serfs who sought jobs as industrial workers in the rapidly developing Russian industry. These people often lived in harsh conditions, sometimes renting a room, shared between several families. There were also many homeless people.
Immediately after the October Revolution, a special program of "densification" (уплотнение) was enabled: people who had no shelter were settled in flats of those who had multiple unused rooms, with only one room left to previous owners. The flats were declared state property. This led to numerous shared flats where several families lived simultaneously. Nevertheless, the problem of complete homelessness was mostly solved as anybody could apply for a room or a place in dormitory (the number of shared flats steadily decreased after large-scale residential building program was implemented starting in the 1960s).[ citation needed ]
By 1922, there were at least 7 million homeless children in Russia as a result of nearly a decade of devastation from World War I and the Russian Civil War. [1] This led to the creation of many orphanages. By the 1930s, the USSR declared the abolition of homelessness and every citizen was obliged to have a propiska – a place of permanent residency. Nobody could be stripped of propiska without substitution or refuse it without a confirmed permission (called "order") to register in another place. If someone wanted to move to another city or expand their living area, they had to find a partner who wanted to mutually exchange the flats. The right for shelter was secured in the Soviet constitution. Not having permanent residency was legally considered a crime. There were also virtually no empty and unused apartments in the cities: any flat where nobody was registered was immediately lent by the state at a symbolic price to others who needed better living conditions. If a person who had permanent registration could not pay for shelter, nobody had the right to evict them, only to demand money through the court.[ citation needed ] However, this did not put an end to homelessness in the USSR and those who still struggled with homelessness were often labelled "parasites" for not being engaged in socially useful labor. Those homeless not on the street were kept in detention centres run by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Soviet journalist Alexei Lebedev after living in the vagrant community in Moscow stated that there were "hundreds of thousands" of homeless in the USSR and that the homeless community's presence was becoming more noticeable in the later years of the USSR. [2]
After 1957, the USSR built 2.2 million units every year. Due to the institution of basic housing rent, [3] rent only made up about 5% of a family's monthly budget, [4] although in Moscow, the average family only spent 3% of their budget on rent. [5]
After the breakup of the USSR and adopting capitalism, [6] the problem of homelessness sharpened dramatically,[ citation needed ] partially because of the legal vacuum of the early 1990s with some laws contradicting each other and partially because of a high rate of frauds in the realty market.[ citation needed ] In 1991, articles 198 and 209 of Russian criminal code which instituted a criminal penalty for not having permanent residence were abolished. Because most flats had been privatized and many people sold their last shelter without successfully buying another, there was a sharp increase of the homeless. Renting apartments from a private owner became widespread (which usually only gives temporary registration and the apartment owner could evict the lessee after the contract is over, or if the rent was unpaid). In Moscow, the first overnight shelter for the homeless was opened in 1992. [7] In the late 1990s, certain amendments in law were implemented to reduce the rise in homelessness, such as the prohibition of selling the last home with registered children.
Nevertheless, the state is still obliged to give permanent shelter for free to anybody who needs better living conditions or has no permanent registration. This is because the right to shelter is still included in the constitution. However, this may take many years. Nobody still has the right to strip a person of permanent residency without their will, even the owner of the apartment. This creates problems for banks because mortgage loans became increasingly popular. Banks are obliged to provide a new, cheaper flat for a person instead of the old one if the person fails to repay the loan, or wait until all people who live in the flat are dead. Several projects of special cheap 'social' flats for those who failed to repay mortgages were proposed to facilitate the mortgage market. [8]
There exists Nochlezhka NGO acting in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.
A dacha is a seasonal or year-round second home, often located in the exurbs of post-Soviet countries, including Russia. A cottage or shack serving as a family's main or only home, or an outbuilding, is not considered a dacha, although some dachas recently have been converted to year-round residences and vice versa.
The 101st kilometre is a colloquial phrase for restrictions on freedom of movement in the Soviet Union.
An internal or domestic passport is an identity document. Uses for internal passports have included restricting citizens of a subdivided state to employment in their own area, clearly recording the ethnicity of citizens to enforce segregation or prevent passing, and controlling access to sensitive sites or closed cities.
A propiska was both a residency permit and a migration-recording tool, used in the Russian Empire before 1917 and in the Soviet Union from the 1930s. Literally, the word propiska means "inscription", alluding to the inscription in a state internal passport permitting a person to reside in a given place. For a state-owned or third-party-owned property, having a propiska meant the inclusion of a person in the rental contract associated with a dwelling. A propiska was certified via local police (Militsiya) registers and stamped in this internal passports. Undocumented residence anywhere for longer than a few weeks was prohibited.
The Soviet passport was an identity document issued pursuant to the laws of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for citizens of the USSR. For the general purposes of identity certification, Soviet passports contained such data as name, date of birth, gender, place of birth, ethnicity, and citizenship, as well as a photo of the passport holder. At different stages of development of the Soviet passport system, they could also contain information on place of work, social status, and other supporting information needed for those agencies and organizations to which the Soviet citizens used to appeal.
Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency homeless shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental, to formal and informal rental, indigenous housing, and ending with affordable home ownership.
A house in multiple occupation (HMO), or a house of multiple occupancy, is a British English term which refers to residential properties where 'common areas' exist and are shared by more than one household.
In England, local authorities have duties to homeless people under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002. There are five hurdles which a homeless person must overcome in order to qualify as statutory homeless. If an applicant only meets the first three of these tests Councils still have a duty to provide interim accommodation. However an applicant must satisfy all five for a Council to have to give an applicant "reasonable preference" on the social housing register. Even if a person passes these five tests councils have the ability to use the private rented sector to end their duty to a homeless person.
Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing is a basic human need, and it plays a critical role in shaping the quality of life for individuals, families, and communities.
Homelessness in the United Kingdom is measured and responded to in differing ways in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but affects people living in every part of the UK's constituent countries.
Ukrainian nationality law details the conditions by which a person holds nationality of Ukraine. The primary law governing these requirements is the law "On Citizenship of Ukraine", which came into force on 1 March 2001.
Russian citizenship law details the conditions by which a person holds citizenship of Russia. The primary law governing citizenship requirements is the federal law "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation", which came into force on 1 July 2002.
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes disparate situations, including:
Homelessness in Israel is a phenomenon that mostly developed after the mid-1980s.
The government of the Soviet Union followed an unofficial policy of state atheism, aiming to gradually eliminate religious belief within its borders. While it never officially made religion illegal, the state nevertheless made great efforts to reduce the prevalence of religious belief within society. To this end, at various times in its history it engaged in anti-religious persecutions of varying intensity and methodology. Believers were never officially attacked for being believers, but they were officially attacked for real or perceived political opposition to the state and to its policies. These attacks, however, in the broader ideological context, were meant to serve the ultimate goal of eliminating religion, and the perceived political opposition acted as a legal pretext to carry this out. Thus, although the Soviet Union was officially a secular state and guaranteed freedom of religion in its constitutions, in practice believers suffered discrimination and were widely attacked for promoting religion.
The passport system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an organisational framework of the single national civil registration system based upon identification documents, and managed in accordance with the laws by ministries and other governmental bodies authorised by the Constitution of the USSR in the sphere of internal affairs.
Affordable housing in Canada is living spaces that are deemed financially accessible to those with a median household income in Canada. The property ladder continuum of affordable housing in Canada includes market, non-market, and government-subsidized housing.
Registration in the Russian Federation is the system that records the residence and internal migration of Russian citizens. The present system was introduced on October 1, 1993, and replaced the prior repressive mandatory Soviet system of propiska. The word "propiska" is still widely used colloquially to refer to the registration program.
The Internal Russian passport is a mandatory identity document for all Russian citizens residing in Russia who are aged 14 or over. The Internal Russian passport is an internal passport used for travel and identification purposes in Russia, which is distinct from the International Russian passport used by Russian citizens to travel in and out of Russian borders.
Homelessness in Greece refers to the state or process of sleeping in housing that is below the minimum standard or lacking secure tenure, in relation to the nation of Greece. Austerity measures and the ongoing fiscal crisis have significantly spurred the rise in homelessness in Greece in the 21st century. Instances of homelessness have been dominantly concentrated in the city of Athens. Homelessness remains a relatively under-examined area of social policy in Greece, with the first organised counting for homeless people taking place in May 2018. Governments and non-profit organisations alike have made efforts to counter this phenomenon.
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