Housing the New Russia

In Housing the New Russia, Jane R. Zavisca examines Russia's attempts to transition from a socialist vision of housing, in which the government promised a separate, state-owned apartment for every family, to a market-based and mortgage-dependent model of home ownership. In 1992, the post-Soviet Russian government signed an agreement with the United States to create the Russian housing market. The vision of an American-style market guided housing policy over the next two decades. Privatization gave socialist housing to existing occupants, creating a nation of homeowners overnight. New financial institutions, modeled on the American mortgage system, laid the foundation for a market. Next the state tried to stimulate mortgages—and reverse the declining birth rate, another major concern—by subsidizing loans for young families.Imported housing institutions, however, failed to resonate with local conceptions of ownership, property, and rights. Most Russians reject mortgages, which they call "debt bondage," as an unjust "overpayment" for a good they consider to be a basic right. Instead of stimulating homeownership, privatization, combined with high prices and limited credit, created a system of "property without markets." Frustrated aspirations and unjustified inequality led most Russians to call for a government-controlled housing market. Under the Soviet system, residents retained lifelong tenancy rights, perceiving the apartments they inhabited as their own. In the wake of privatization, young Russians can no longer count on the state to provide their house, nor can they afford to buy a home with wages, forcing many to live with extended family well into adulthood. Zavisca shows that the contradictions of housing policy are a significant factor in Russia's falling birth rates and the apparent failure of its pronatalist policies. These consequences further stack the deck against the likelihood that an affordable housing market will take off in the near future.

[Understanding] mortgages in Russia, argues Jane Zavisca in her new book Housing the New Russia, is crucial not only for understanding postsocialist Russia..Housing the New Russia engages many of the standard issues in the literature on housing and offers a fresh look at them.. [It] leaves readers better informed about the established and emerging mortgage markets and more critical about the American Dream, which 'suddenly seems more fraught with moral hazard' (p. 199)., "[Zavisca's] work... breaks new ground by looking at why the sort of market-orientated housing policies that have come to dominate in the West despite extensive financial backing from organisations such as the USA’s Agency for International Development (USAID), proven to be so difficult to introduce into the Russian housing sector... Overall, there is much to applaud in Zavisca’s study. Her ability to effectively switch from macro-level political and economic analysis to micro-level discussions of individual Russians’ domestic arrangements is particularly impressive, as is her ability to make use of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Likewise, her work must also be commended for attempting to systematically examine the relationship between housing and reproductive behaviour—an area that has received far too little attention from scholars of post-Soviet Russia... This book provides readers with a telling and multi-layered account of how and why successive have governments have found it so dif?cult to establish a market-based and mortgage-dependent housing regime in post-Soviet Russia., In an exciting new exploration of housing in contemporary Russia, Jane R. Zavisca examines the challenges related to the emergence of the housing market in the post-Soviet period..Zavisca's well-argued and clearly presented call for greater integration of housing issues into studies of inequality, family formation, and social satisfaction is on very solid ground. This is a fine work worthy of wide readership., The central argument in Jane Zavisca's excellent book is that the cultural attitudes to housing derived from the Soviet period continue to have a profound impact on the contemporary housing system in Russia, and help account for the failure to 'transplant' successfully the US model of housing finance.... Zavisca brings refreshing insights into the evolution of housing policy in Russia., Zavisca meticulously examines the causes and consequences of mortgage housing market failure in the new Russia.... By providing insights into the new Russian society and the challenges it faces regarding housing, population and family life, economy, stratification, and social change, Zavisca makes an important contribution to Russian studies, economics, and political sociology. Highly recommended.

Jane R. Zavisca is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona.