17 of 20 Russian Federal Subjects Where Homelessness or the Threat of Homelessness is Greatest are East of the Urals, ‘To Be Precise’ Calculates

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 21 – No one knows how many homeless there are in Russia as Moscow doesn’t conduct a census of the homeless or report data about this category although estimates suggest at least two million Russians are without a roof over their heads (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/russia-now-has-two-million-homeless-and.html).

            The To Be Precise portal has come up with perhaps the best estimate of the size of the problem not directly but by using 15 data sets that are published and that are related to homeless or the threat of homelessness (tochno.st/materials/gde-v-rossii-vyse-risk-ostatsia-bez-doma-reiting-regionov-ot-esli-byt-tocnym-i-noclezki).

            These fifteen are divided into five groups: the first concerns income and employment, the second the concentration of people at risk because of debts, past imprisonment or recent moves, the third, overcrowding and emergency housing, the fourth, mortality from diseases common among the homeless, and the fifth, “the strength of family ties in the region.”

            Using these metrics, the portal said, it concluded that homelessness or the threat of homelessness is greatest east of the Urals, where 17 of the worst regional situations are, and least in the North Caucasus, where family ties remain strongest and relatives are more likely to take in people who lose their housing than is the case elsewhere.

            In the middle of the rankings are Moscow and St. Petersburg, the portal says, with higher incomes and lower unemployment pushing risks down but income inequality and the high cost of housing pushing the figures in the opposite direction. But there the problem that does exist is especially serious because “there are almost no emergency housing and few prisoners.”

             To Be Precise notes that “seven of the 85 regions have no homeless shelter. There are no public shelters in twenty regions. If a person loses housing in a region where there is not a single shelter, and in winter the temperature drops below -25 ° C, the chances of surviving on the street are much less.”