Assigning “Emergency Status” to Perm Housing Stock: Informal Rules and the Expectations of Actors

Abstract

The problem of emergency housing is a complex organization of social relations which includes the motivations of residents, administrations, and developers, their expectations, as well as the rules and practices that shape the assigning of emergency status. Emergency status is not only used to actually capture the physical condition of a building, but also incorporates other circumstances in which the status is either assigned to a residential building or not. This paper describes the occurrence of emergency situations and the conditions under which they occur. We test the assumption that the emergency status of a residential building is not determined only by the degree of its physical deterioration, but also depends on the economic attractiveness of the neighborhood, the motivation of residents, legal restrictions and urban planning regulations, other houses in the area with emergency status, and other circumstances.

The city of Perm, which underwent a transformation of its central districts in connection with its 300th anniversary in 2023, was chosen as a case study to describe the specifics of the emergency status of housing. The empirical part of the study relies on eight semi-structured interviews with residents of such buildings, local politicians, activists, housing policy experts, representatives of the Territorial Association of Owners, the developer, and the Perm city administration. In order to fully cover the variations in the workings of assigning emergency status, we constructed a typology of “emergency” housing, which covers four types according to the presence of emergency status and the residents’ perception of emergency status. The narrative is organized around a detailed analysis of cases which falls into one of the identified types.

We conclude that the informal rules of assigning emergency status result from the desire to compensate for dysfunctional urban policy instruments. The current state of affairs leads to emergency status regulations becoming a tool of manipulation in urban relations and they are often aimed not at the problem housing itself, but at the development of territories. An important role is played by residents, who in different circumstances either challenge or seek the assignment of emergency status to their buildings, guided not only by the high degree of wear and tear of buildings, but also by the attractiveness of the territory.