‘Nowadays Kazan doesn’t have flats meeting accessible environment requirements’
Kazan doesn’t have flats that would meet requirements of people with disabilities. This is why the Executive Committee has to buy them separately. This is what Realnoe Vremya was told in the city administration.
“It is planned to buy adapted flats for families who have people with disabilities whose living conditions were recognised unsuitable for their accommodation, and at the same time the family was recognised low-income and is on the list of those who need accommodation. According to the existing housing legislation, in this case local governments provide an adapted flat of the same size according to a social rent agreement. Unfortunately, today Kazan doesn’t have flats meeting accessible environment requirements,” the city administration said.
The city administration added that the city authorities don’t build housing themselves, this is why they hold auctions to purchase flats for disabled citizens in the vacant housing market. In late 2022, the Kazan Housing Policy Office was given 36 million rubles to buy adapted flats for disabled people entitled for receiving out of turn. An electronic auction, according to a protocol of last December, was recognised invalid because there wasn’t submitted any application to participate in the purchase.
“The money was sent back to the budget of Kazan. Nowadays there is again an auction to buy eight adapted flats for 56 million rubles for people with disabilities. An application can be submitted until 14 September 2023,” the Kazan city administration concluded.
It should be reminded that the city administration will buy eight flats for people with disabilities. The biggest amount of money will be given for one-bedroom flats.
In addition, projects for providing citizens with disabilities with adapted flats started to be discussed as early as 2021. Kazan Mayor Ilsur Metshin made such an offer.
According to him, providing these citizens with housing meeting Accessible Environment requirements is a hot-button issue in the city. If most public institutions are equipped with all the essential for people with disabilities, the housing fund isn’t.