Roof leakage – attack the residents of the top floors. Most often, water begins to pour from the ceiling in winter, when there is a lot of snow on the roof and it slowly melts. The managing organizations regularly charge for the maintenance of the house, but they are in no hurry to help the victims. Our consultant lawyer Victoria Tsarihina-Fesenko tells where to complain about the arbitrariness.
February 16 2017
If water poured on your head, do not waste time. Call the management company first and report the problem. The contact phone number of the organization is usually indicated on the receipt for payment of utility bills. Be sure to draw up a written appeal in two copies and take it to the dispatch service of the area. Be sure to make sure that your copy has the incoming number, date and name of the person who accepted the document. You need to sign the application log as well.
Utility workers must come to the apartment within 12 hours and record the fact of the leak in the act. In the event that the roof was repaired not so long ago, the employees of the management company try to pretend that the problem does not exist. After all, otherwise you will have to admit that the roof was patched badly and the owners’ money wasted in vain. Experts are postponing the visit in the hope that the water will stop pouring and wet stains on the wallpaper will dry out. After all, then it will be possible to say that these are traces of old leaks that happened before the repair. In such a situation, you need to ring all the bells, ring the control room, and if it doesn’t help, draw up an act of natural disaster yourself, although you will have to involve neighbors as witnesses. It is important to indicate the date, time, place of action, the consequences of a misunderstanding in the document. Then this act will need to be transferred to the housing inspectorate. The issue will be resolved there.
Attach a copy of your appeal to the management company to the act, take a photo of the leaks and go to the housing inspection. Your application will be reviewed 30 days in advance. If violations are identified (for example, poor-quality repairs were previously made), utilities can be held accountable. Be persistent in your demands. In order for the housing office workers to start solving the problem, you can write to the district administration, Rospotrebnadzor, ask for help from an expert, he will make an independent assessment. But the specialist will have to pay for this. Do not try to repair the leaks before the roof is repaired, you will only waste time and money.
Many believe that it is pointless to contact the management company, because if the apartment is privatized, the repair falls on the shoulders of the owner. This is wrong. The roof is a common property of homeowners. And its current repairs should be done by the management company at the expense of the payments made. In the receipts that we receive on a monthly basis, there is a line of expenses: “Payment for the maintenance and repair of housing.” This is just about the current “treatment” of the house, and not about major repairs. But if you cannot do without serious work, they use the money that the owners contribute to the capital repair fund. Now every month you have to transfer funds to it. The payment amount is proportional to the number of square meters owned by the tenants. It is worth considering that the capital repair fund was created not so long ago, and therefore the required amount could not have accumulated by now, because roof repair is an expensive business. And in this case, tenants have to add their own money. But there is another option.
The problem can be solved by attracting money from the Housing and Utilities Fund within the framework of the state program. It includes financial support in case of repairs. They can compensate up to 95% of the total amount that is required. In order to get under the action of the program, you will have to perform a number of actions:
1) hold a meeting of homeowners and decide on major repairs. 51% of apartment owners (not meeting participants) voted in favor of renovation? You can proceed further;
2) pay off all debts to public utilities;
3) draw up and approve a work estimate;
4) collect 5% of the cost of the repair (this money is the required contribution);
5) submit an application to the local administration for roofing work within the framework of the state program.
If most of the apartments in the building are not privatized, repairs are made at the expense of the municipality