Staunton, February 6 – The kommunalka, a living arrangement in which many families shared kitchens and bathrooms that was long a staple of Soviet life given that era’s rapid urbanization, is making a comeback at least in Moscow because residents caught between rising rents and declining job opportunities can no longer afford separate apartments.
Moskovsky komsomolets journalist Elena Sokolova says that when the pandemic first it, many expected Muscovites to flee the city especially as many saw their jobs disappear or go virtual. But instead, many decided to ride out the crisis by entering into joint rental arrangements (mk.ru/moscow/2021/02/06/v-moskvu-vernulis-kommunalki-gorozhanam-ne-khvataet-deneg-na-zhile.html).
Such arrangements had never completely disappeared from the city, she says. Some older residents have not been able to leave them; and students have long joined forces to rent places not far from where they are studying. But these two groups constitute relatively small fractions of the rental market.
Instead, the dominant category of people electing the new kommunalkas, Sokolova says, are workers from Russian regions or the countries of the former Soviet Union, “including families with children.” The numbers of such people seeking places in multi-family apartments rose 12 percent over the last year.
That explains the demand side of this equation, she continues; but there is a supply side as well. Many Muscovites who have larger apartments but have lost their jobs because of the pandemic-related economic crisis have decided to rent out some of the rooms in them in order to compensate.
And these trends have continued or even accelerated despite declines in rents for most categories of housing in Moscow. But it is concentrated in older and less desirable buildings, often far from metro stations or other transportation routes, and thus the apartments that have become kommunalkas again may resemble their Soviet predecessors even more closely.
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