- 17 Dec 2022 15:00
#15259286
Some people think that under Socialism, affordable housing would exist.
Well, here's something to consider: Under both the Soviet Union and Communist China, internal borders were put up within the country to control movement of people and where they could chose to live. This was a natural response to trying to dealing with the economic problem of scarcity.
If the Soviet Union had offered free housing to any of its citizens wherever they want to live, more than half the population would have wanted to live in Moscow. It would obviously be impossible to give away free housing wherever the recipient wanted to live.
Not only that, but in the Soviet Union, at one era of time there were long waiting lists for people trying to get housing. As a result, some people had to just build housing themselves, because they couldn't wait.
The housing planners initially built to high quality and used plenty of extra concrete in the designs because they were afraid if the quality did not meet specifications, Stalin might have them sent off to the gulag. But with the priority being put on quality, there was a trade-off with quantity. And perhaps one reason the early Soviet system seemed to function adequately was that the society's population had not long before been decimated by war and famine, which conveniently limited the need for new housing to be constructed. During the succeeding era of time, a larger number of apartment blocks were built but they were very poor in quality. The slope of the floors were often not even perfectly level. By the late 1960s in Moscow, the earlier crisis in housing was mostly over and the quality began to improve to reasonable levels, at least not terrible in quality.
The housing for families in cities often consisted of what today would be considered very small sized apartments, which an entire family would live in. These were well-designed apartments, however, with a very efficient layout.
The problem of insufficient housing was still very acute in mid-1950s when Nikita Khruschov became the Communist Party leader. His solution was to stop construction of the lavish "Stalin Empire style" houses (which are being valued to this day for their big rooms, high ceilings and beauty; they were expensive to build so the state couldn't build enough of them) and embrace standardized factory-style construction techniques (just a few "typical" projects for the whole country; prefabricated building blocks and panels) to make construction as quick and cheap as possible, so the housing problem could be solved quicker.
Indeed, this approach allowed to drastically improve living conditions of many families (Nonetheless, the Soviet Union never fully resolved the housing problem.)
As for the aesthetics, Khruschov declared "a war on architectural excesses", so all houses since that time lacked decoration, had very basic exteriors and were very similar.
People's access to housing was like their access to consumer goods in that it depended on their position in society and their place of work. Often, housing (the so-called "department housing") was provided by the workplace. Administrative control over housing and the movement of citizens was carried out by means of the residency permit.
Many people without housing, especially people from the rural areas, tried to get work as janitors so as to gain a room in the city.
In cities right up to the 1970s, most families lived in a single room in a communal apartment, where they suffered from overcrowding and had little hope of improving their situation. A comparative minority of people lived in "private" apartments or still lived in dormitories and barracks. Although as far back as the 1930s, a private apartment for each family was declared a goal of Soviet housing policy, large-scale construction was begun only at the end of the 1950s. Extensive construction of low-quality five-story concrete-block buildings, dubbed "Khrushchevki," (or "Khrushcheby," which rhymes with the Russian word "trushchoby", meaning slums), mitigated the situation to some degree. Nevertheless, the declared goal was not met, even in the 1980s when high-rise projects with private apartments became the main form of city housing. At that time, some cities, including Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), had almost a third of its citizens "on the housing list".
By the 1970s, the average waiting time to receive an apartment in the USSR was around six to seven years.
Beginning in the 1960s, people who could not count on joining the housing list because their present space exceeded the legal norm (they had more than five square meters per person, equivalent to 53.8 square feet) could contribute their personal funds to a cooperative construction project and receive what was called a "cooperative apartment." Only the better-off portion of the population could afford this, and here also the amount of living space a family already had could not exceed specific limits. For those who could join a cooperative, housing was comparatively affordable: the price per square meter in a cooperative apartment was about equivalent to an average monthly salary.
The limit of nine square meters per person held up to the early 1980s, after which it began to increase. In calculating square meters, the government took into account not only a family's primary living space, but also, if they had one, the dacha (a tiny summer cottage some families maintained on a small lot, to be able to get away from the crowded city and maintain a tiny garden).
Soviet dachas could be owned, which made them one of the few substantial forms of private property available. The appalling conditions that most people endured in their city apartments made escape to the dacha seem attractive. In Stalin’s time, dachas were mainly a perk of the Party and cultural elites. By the 1980s, most all families who held the type of jobs requiring a university education had the ability to have one. A 1993-1994 survey of seven Russian cities showed that almost a quarter of all households owned one.
related thread: Some thoughts on China's Hukou system
viewtopic.php?f=114&t=181409
Well, here's something to consider: Under both the Soviet Union and Communist China, internal borders were put up within the country to control movement of people and where they could chose to live. This was a natural response to trying to dealing with the economic problem of scarcity.
If the Soviet Union had offered free housing to any of its citizens wherever they want to live, more than half the population would have wanted to live in Moscow. It would obviously be impossible to give away free housing wherever the recipient wanted to live.
Not only that, but in the Soviet Union, at one era of time there were long waiting lists for people trying to get housing. As a result, some people had to just build housing themselves, because they couldn't wait.
The housing planners initially built to high quality and used plenty of extra concrete in the designs because they were afraid if the quality did not meet specifications, Stalin might have them sent off to the gulag. But with the priority being put on quality, there was a trade-off with quantity. And perhaps one reason the early Soviet system seemed to function adequately was that the society's population had not long before been decimated by war and famine, which conveniently limited the need for new housing to be constructed. During the succeeding era of time, a larger number of apartment blocks were built but they were very poor in quality. The slope of the floors were often not even perfectly level. By the late 1960s in Moscow, the earlier crisis in housing was mostly over and the quality began to improve to reasonable levels, at least not terrible in quality.
The housing for families in cities often consisted of what today would be considered very small sized apartments, which an entire family would live in. These were well-designed apartments, however, with a very efficient layout.
The problem of insufficient housing was still very acute in mid-1950s when Nikita Khruschov became the Communist Party leader. His solution was to stop construction of the lavish "Stalin Empire style" houses (which are being valued to this day for their big rooms, high ceilings and beauty; they were expensive to build so the state couldn't build enough of them) and embrace standardized factory-style construction techniques (just a few "typical" projects for the whole country; prefabricated building blocks and panels) to make construction as quick and cheap as possible, so the housing problem could be solved quicker.
Indeed, this approach allowed to drastically improve living conditions of many families (Nonetheless, the Soviet Union never fully resolved the housing problem.)
As for the aesthetics, Khruschov declared "a war on architectural excesses", so all houses since that time lacked decoration, had very basic exteriors and were very similar.
People's access to housing was like their access to consumer goods in that it depended on their position in society and their place of work. Often, housing (the so-called "department housing") was provided by the workplace. Administrative control over housing and the movement of citizens was carried out by means of the residency permit.
Many people without housing, especially people from the rural areas, tried to get work as janitors so as to gain a room in the city.
In cities right up to the 1970s, most families lived in a single room in a communal apartment, where they suffered from overcrowding and had little hope of improving their situation. A comparative minority of people lived in "private" apartments or still lived in dormitories and barracks. Although as far back as the 1930s, a private apartment for each family was declared a goal of Soviet housing policy, large-scale construction was begun only at the end of the 1950s. Extensive construction of low-quality five-story concrete-block buildings, dubbed "Khrushchevki," (or "Khrushcheby," which rhymes with the Russian word "trushchoby", meaning slums), mitigated the situation to some degree. Nevertheless, the declared goal was not met, even in the 1980s when high-rise projects with private apartments became the main form of city housing. At that time, some cities, including Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), had almost a third of its citizens "on the housing list".
By the 1970s, the average waiting time to receive an apartment in the USSR was around six to seven years.
Beginning in the 1960s, people who could not count on joining the housing list because their present space exceeded the legal norm (they had more than five square meters per person, equivalent to 53.8 square feet) could contribute their personal funds to a cooperative construction project and receive what was called a "cooperative apartment." Only the better-off portion of the population could afford this, and here also the amount of living space a family already had could not exceed specific limits. For those who could join a cooperative, housing was comparatively affordable: the price per square meter in a cooperative apartment was about equivalent to an average monthly salary.
The limit of nine square meters per person held up to the early 1980s, after which it began to increase. In calculating square meters, the government took into account not only a family's primary living space, but also, if they had one, the dacha (a tiny summer cottage some families maintained on a small lot, to be able to get away from the crowded city and maintain a tiny garden).
Soviet dachas could be owned, which made them one of the few substantial forms of private property available. The appalling conditions that most people endured in their city apartments made escape to the dacha seem attractive. In Stalin’s time, dachas were mainly a perk of the Party and cultural elites. By the 1980s, most all families who held the type of jobs requiring a university education had the ability to have one. A 1993-1994 survey of seven Russian cities showed that almost a quarter of all households owned one.
related thread: Some thoughts on China's Hukou system
viewtopic.php?f=114&t=181409
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