From: MSN Nicknamepsychoteddybear24  (Original Message)    Sent: 8/31/2007 9:44 AM
GROZNY'S HOUSING CHAOS

Corruption and fake documents means many flats are disputed by two or even more
people.

By Laura Aldamova in Grozny

Madina Ozdieva, an ethnic Chechen, returned to Chechnya from Kazakstan together
with her young daughter in 2003. She could not afford to buy a place to live and
applied to Grozny's municipal authorities for an apartment.

"If I had had brothers or sisters, I wouldn't need a flat," said Ozdieva. "But I
have nobody and no corner of my own."

In 2004, she was given a flat in the centre of the city, but instead of this
being the answer to her prayers, it signalled the start of a nightmare, as she
was caught up in a shadowy world of disputed ownership and bureaucratic
obstruction that is Grozny's housing situation.

Ozdieva has never been able to move in to the apartment she was awarded because
another woman named Balku Ulubayeva lives there.

The flat is registered in the database of the city authorities as belonging to
Ozdieva. But another register, that of the housing department says that it
belongs to Ulubayeva.

Madina said Ulubayeva had twice offered to give her another flat in exchange for
the one she was in possession of. "One man, who introduced himself as a city
hall employee, told me that Balki had occupied 18 flats," said Madina.

Ulubayeva herself insisted she had no other flats besides the one she lived in.
"My previous flat was destroyed during the war," she said. "I refused to be
recompensed for it, and the administration [of the Lenin District] gave me the
new flat."

Ozdieva has hit a brick wall in her legal pursuit to possess the apartment. Her
case is a microcosm of a housing chaos which afflicts the entire city, with
corruption and fake documents making many flats disputed by two or even more
people.

Ozdieva complained to the city authorities that another person lived in her
flat. "They had promised that if I had problems, their lawyers would help me,"
she said. "But I got no help from them. They told me to 'go to court'.

"In order to apply to court, I needed data on Ulubayeva, but neither the housing
department not the technical inventory bureau gave them to me. Without the data
I could not lodge a complaint against her in court."

In a further setback, the frustrated would-be homeowner then received
notification from the city authorities saying the ownership documents she had
received from them for the flat were not valid. She was told that it was
registered as hers at a date when it actually belonged to a previous owner.

Ozdieva said that this was the fault of the authorities themselves: when
providing her the flat in 2004 city hall officials had backdated the
registration to the year 1999.

"I argued with them, telling them to put down the right date, but they assured
me this wouldn't cause me any problems," she said.

"When they started checking out my housing situation, I cheered up, thinking
that justice would be finally done. But it turned out to be the opposite. I
can't afford to go to court, as it is hugely expensive and my salary in the
theatre is 3,000 roubles (115 US dollars) a month."

The city administration concedes that the issue of providing housing for the
needy in Grozny, a city devastated by bombing and artillery in two military
campaigns is a "tangled knot".

"Recently, we have come across an increasing number of cases involving forged
documentation about the purchase or sale or registration of flats," deputy mayor
Rezvan Bakharchiev told IWPR.

According to the city administration's data, there are 8,000 units of housing in
the city's housing stock that have been surrendered by their owners for
compensation and which can be allocated to those who need them.

"These surrendered flats are provided to persons, who lost their housing during
the fighting - the poor, single mothers and orphans," said Bakharchiev.

According to Bakharchiev, an official commission has annulled 2,000 housing
contracts on the grounds that either the owners had obtained the flats illegally
or used them for commercial facilities, while living elsewhere. A total of 188
of these cases went to court between March 23 and August 20 this year.

But some experts blame the city authorities themselves for the confusion.

"There are frequent cases, when the same flat turns out to have several
registered owners," said a human rights lawyer who did not want to be named.
"For instance, a person has a permission to own a flat dated 1998-1999, but this
does not stop the city hall from issuing an order for the same flat to some
other person.

"Another common problem is that people who bought their housing before [the
start of the first Chechen war in] 1994, mainly, from Russian-speaking
residents, find out that the flats they have lived in for 10-15 years have been
given up [to the authorities] by their original owners, who fled the republic
and received compensation for them."

The reconstruction work underway in Grozny has only added to the confusion.
Residents of houses scheduled for demolition are often given flats formally
belonging to other people. "This has resulted in a great amount of litigation,"
said the lawyer.

Zara Tsurova, who used to live in a block of flats that has by now been pulled
down, said, "All the residents of our house were given flats of equal value in
another district. But all these flats turned out to have owners. Now we all have
been spending all our time in court."

The city administration denies that it's responsible for solving these disputes.

"We are not a law-enforcement body, not a court, it is not up to us alone to
decide," said the deputy mayor. "If both sides have the documents, an expert
study will find out whose documents are authentic. There are law-enforcement
agencies, whose competence these matters lie in."

Unemployed mother of five Sovdat Jamaldinova lives in a temporary accommodation
centre for people who lost their housing in the conflict. Two years ago, the
city hall gave her an apartment. "It turned out that another woman lived there,"
said Sovdat. "She has three orphaned children, and I can't demand that she leave
the flat."

She said that the apartment she was promised is registered in the name of
another woman by one municipal office and in the name of a third person by
another.

Bakharchiev acknowledged that the housing chaos is largely a result of too many
people seeking too many places to live in a city whose apartment blocks had been
ravaged by war. He said that the two thousand apartments that were now available
for allocation were simply not enough to satisfy everyone.

"We can't reassure people that these 2,000 flats will settle our housing
problems," he said. "Before the conflict, the city's housing stock included
4,900 blocks of flats. Today it's five times less than that, while since 1994
the population has only increased."

Laura Aldamova is a correspondent with Chechenskoye Obshchestvo newspaper.