Home ownership? They can't give it away privatization of housing in Russia

The privatization of housing is an important element in the transformation of the former communist states from state-run, planned economies to market systems. In this paper the process, the problems, and the main consequences of the privatization process for the social structure and for the socio-sp atial pattern of cities is analyzed. The empirical research was done in St. Petersburg. In Russia occupants can become owners for free. The numbers of applications for transfer to private ownership increased until 1993, but since then the y have fallen and are stagnating. Obviously, nearly half of the population are not eager to become owners, not even for free. There are various reason s for this: because tenants pay low rental rates, the incentives to take ov er the responsibilities of an owner are weak; insufficient legal regulation s make people cautious; and the sharing of one apartment by several familie s ("Kommunalkas") makes privatization very difficult. Two results of the pr ocess are remarkable: through privatization the privileged housing conditio ns of the former cadres of the Communist party have become permanent and ha ve been transformed into highly prized properties in a developing housing m arket; by means of sales and forced relocations the pre-communist sociospat ial structure of the cities is slowly being restructured - and the unattrac tive prefabricated housing stock at the periphery of the cities is likely t o become the slums of the 21(st) century.