Huge New Urban Projects Underway - Tens of Thousands of Families Relocated to New Housing!

The completion of this bridge was the first result of the national project on the complex modernization of arterial road infrastructure. This year, for example, parts of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Chuya Highway were reconstructed in its framework. In total, around 100 billion rubles dedicated to national projects, healthcare, education, and housing will shift to next year. This year, they couldn't spend it in time.

Aleksandr Yevstigneev will tell us about the tasks set.

The last turn of keys. Such excitement, for it's the first time they enter an apartment as owners. They received the keys today. Young people who grew up in orphanages have especially keen senses about owning their own home.

Darya Fyodorova: "Emotions are running very high. I've never had one. It feels so cozy. Families who had been living in dilapidated dwellings are moving into apartments".

Memories of that are scary. Practically every region demolishes "available" housing like this without mercy. There's no point in repairing it. And people receive new apartments under the targeted federal project. This year, all over the country, they relocated 25,000 people. Another 39,000 will be relocated next year.

And we're talking about new residential compounds. They've been constructing most of them under the new rules. On July 1st, the Escrow Law came into force to resolve the issue of defrauded homebuyers once and for all. A land developer now doesn't take the money right away but transfers it to a bank account. The developer gets the money after the building is finished and the buyers get the keys.

Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of Russia: "We must reach modern, civilized forms of building housing. Not the ways we had when a great number of cooperative housing contracts took place and lead to very problematic situations".

The specially created state fund solves the problems of those defrauded. This year, around 16,000 people will receive housing or compensation. Another 40,000 will receive their aid in 2020.

Oleg Govorun, director-general of the Shared Construction Participants Protection Fund: "We'll be able to solve this accumulated problem within the next three years. This means it'll be solved by 2023".

By the way, when it was enforced to keep the participants' money in escrow accounts instead of in fishy companies, many analysts predicted a decline in construction. It didn't happen. This year, more housing was built than in the previous year. And the state stimulates the construction business by taking a share of expenses. For example, in Kazan, companies build residential compounds. And the federal and local authorities finance the construction of the biggest childcare centers and schools in the region.

Essentially, they simplify laws to make it easier for business, while apartments automatically become complicated, modernize, grow technologically advanced, and often cheaper. In Belgorod Oblast, they managed to reconcile interests of the private mortgage companies and those borrowing from them. They build houses in 30-50 days using new technology.

Maksim Arabinsky, assistant to the CEO of a local mortgage company: "Buyers can take a mortgage, pay the down payment, and move in as soon as possible, without waiting three months or a year".

In total, this year, they built three billion square meters (32 billion square feet) of housing in Russia. The national project named "Housing" will be in force until 2024.

Aleksandr Yevstigneev. Vesti.