Problems of condominiums, their raider attacks and lack of powers were discussed in Kyiv

20.04.2024

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On April 17, 2024, at the initiative of the Public Council at the Dniprovskyi District State Administration in Kyiv, the Rusanivka Neighborhood and Darnytska Square Community Organization, a roundtable discussion was held on the topic of «Community Self-Organization Bodies: Current Status, Challenges, and Prospects». According to the participants of the event, this meeting was the first in several years to bring together representatives of Kyiv’s neighborhood associations and local authorities.

The event was attended by:

five neighborhood organizations in the Dniprovskyi district of the capital
three neighborhood and two house committees, five neighborhood organizations in other districts, including Holosiivskyi, Podilskyi and Desnianskyi districts.
Olena Shevchenko, acting first deputy head of the Dniprovskyi District State Administration in Kyiv,
Ihor Lastovetskyi, Chief of Staff of Dniprovskyi District State Administration in Kyiv,
Viktor Haleta, Deputy Head of the Department for Local Self-Government Development, Direct Democracy Mechanisms and Digitalization of the Kyiv City Council Secretariat,
Iryna Seliuk, Chief Specialist of the Department of Public Communications at the KCSA,
Gennadiy Kryvosheya, Head of the Public Council at the Kyiv City State Administration, and representatives of public councils at district state administrations in Kyiv.

The participants of the roundtable discussed the current state of self-organization bodies (SOBs) in Kyiv. They also focused on issues related to the legislative and regulatory framework for the activities of CBOs, emphasizing the delegated and own powers of the CBOs.

«Self-organization bodies are an institution of civil society, but they are not a public organization. Their activities are regulated by a state-level law that was adopted long ago – in 2001. «Unfortunately, all the attempts by the Verkhovna Rada to amend this law 5-6 years ago have failed. On the one hand, the current law is quite short and rather declarative, on the other hand, many norms in the activities of CBOs are not specified in the law. For example, the law on CBOs does not define what a «meeting» or a «conference» is. And today, the heads of the CBOs themselves do not fully understand these concepts and often confuse them in their correspondence
with us», —said Viktor Haleta, Deputy Head of the Department for Local Self-Government Development, Direct Democracy and Digitalization of the Kyiv City Council Secretariat, during the roundtable.

Such gaps in the legislation give rise to situations for the so-called raider attacks on CBOs. This issue was raised separately during the discussion.

«There are a lot of problems with the SROs, which I have been managing for 15 years in Kyiv alone, – emphasized Haleta. – In 2020-2021, there was a mass phenomenon when the head of the SRO woke up in the morning and he was no longer the head. There is and has been such a practice as illegal seizure of the premises of the community centers. The answer to this phenomenon is very simple: the law that was prepared in 2001 was a wise law. Although it is declarative. If a street or neighborhood center emerges within a neighborhood center, several initiative groups appear, headed by local leaders who want to solve local problems – today’s law allows this. In Kyiv, we have dozens of cases where a neighborhood committee appears within a neighborhood, within the same neighborhood. Now Dniprovskyi district will be the very first in Kyiv to have triple coverage. The house at 12 Kharkivske Shosse will have a head of the house committee. However, the same house committee will be part of another one, the quarterly committee of the Social City. And the Kaunas Committee has a neighborhood Social City. This is legal. Whether it is raiding or not is up to law enforcement agencies to determine».

Representatives of the self-organization bodies have comments on the decisions of the Kyiv City Council, which were adopted by local deputies last year, thereby reformatting the activities of the capital’s neighborhood associations.

«The two decisions of the Kyiv City Council that were adopted in 2023 on SGBs (on March 23, 2023, city deputies at the second session of the Kyiv City Council of the IX convocation adopted decisions No.6261/6302 «On Bodies of Self-Organization of the Population in the City of Kyiv» and No. 6900/6941 of July 13, 2023 – the Wording), they were adopted in violation of a number of regulatory legal acts and the norms of these acts. In particular, 16 articles of the basic Law of Ukraine were violated, and three articles of the Law on Personal Data Protection were violated. The previous decision of the Kyiv City Council was violated. I consider this situation to be abnormal, which requires consideration, and it may be advisable to apply to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for appropriate clarifications in order to obtain clear legal conclusions», — said Oleksandr Chunayev, editor-in-chief
of the Rusanivka Community Center website and representative of this self-governing body in Kyiv.

Representatives of the public believe that even a list of possible delegated powers by the Kyiv City Council for the SGB has not yet been developed. Specific proposals on the content and mechanisms of delegated powers of condominiums were developed in 2019 by representatives of condominiums with private individual development of the territory, but to date they have not been considered even by the relevant standing committee of the Kyiv City Council. Representatives of the SGBs raised problems that they are trying to solve on their territories, but, in their opinion, they lack the authority. For example, to influence the decision of Kyiv authorities on the location of temporary structures and summer trading platforms.

«The participants of the roundtable approved the relevant resolution. At the next meeting of the Public Council at the Dniprovskyi District State Administration in Kyiv, the results of this event will be summarized, a decision will be made, which will be sent to the interested authorities to be taken into account in their work», — the chairman of the Public Council at the Anatoliy Pavlenko, Head of the Dniprovskyi District State Administration in Kyiv, who moderated the roundtable.

The roundtable participants came to the conclusion that the following obstacles significantly impede the effective operation of Kyiv’s self-organization bodies at the proper level

Lack of awareness of Kyiv residents about self-organization bodies as a tool (opportunity) for solving local issues and the results of their activities;
Lack of sustainable communication between the bodies of self-organization of the population and local self-government bodies (Kyiv City Council, Kyiv City Mayor) and district state administrations in Kyiv and their structural units;
the formal approach of Kyiv district state administrations and their structural units to interacting with the
CBOs in the exercise of their powers, rejection by officials and civil servants of CBOs as their partners in
solving problematic issues of local importance, denial of the authority of self-organization of the population;
the distorted perception of the institutional and functional basis of the activities of the CBOs by the majority of Kyiv City Council deputies. Their interaction with CBOs is permanent, mostly peaking during election campaigns. Often, the interests of an individual deputy and the CBO as a representative body of residents differ;
formal approach of Kyiv city district state administrations and their structural subdivisions to interaction with CBOs in the process of solving urgent issues and exercising their powers, denial of the authority of self-organization of the population,
rejection of CBOs as their partners in solving problematic issues of local importance by officials and civil servants.

The following factors hinder the effective exercise of powers by CBOs the most:

Lack of clear organizational and legal mechanisms for exercising the powers defined in Article 14 of the Law of Ukraine "On Self-Organization Bodies»;
Insufficient professional competence of the management of the LSG, gaps in professional training and advanced training, especially in public administration, use of communication technologies, and use of local budget funds (preparation of documentation for PROZORRO, etc.),
Lack of financial support from the city budget to fulfill their own powers, rather than to pay salaries and utilities;
low level of salaries as a motivator for active actions, injustice in providing financial support to CBOs from the local budget due to the lack of criteria for assessing their activities and, accordingly, providing financial support regardless of the level of organization of activities, achievements and desire for success;
lack of premises equipped with office equipment to fulfill the powers of the local self-government organizations (mainly the problem of house and street committees).

The imperfection of the current Procedure for holding meetings (conferences), approved by the decision of the Kyiv City Council of 23.03.2023, which creates artificial bureaucratic obstacles to the self-organization of the population, in some provisions contradicts the Law of Ukraine «On Self-Organization Bodies of the Population» and is unrealistic to implement and creates prerequisites for abuse of power and corruption by the supervisory authority.

It can also be stated that the organization of proper level of work of the SGBs is hampered by the residents’ disbelief in their effectiveness as a body in the system of local self-government of the capital, since, especially in wartime, a significant number of SGBs were unable to adapt to the social needs of the population due to lack of professionalism, lack of financial support for the exercise of their powers, and low level of influence on the process of making and implementing management decisions on the ground. Due to the above, only a certain number of CBOs managed to create volunteer hubs, establish productive support for Ukraine’s defenders, and sustainable communication with residents. But today, there is a decline in the activity of like-minded people, apathy of the population to common problems, so CBOs are forced to look for new methods and means to maintain their achievements at the appropriate level, not to dissolve the volunteer activity, etc.

The full exercise of the powers of the CBOs to control the quality of services in the housing and communal services sector, in particular, to control the quality of repairs (a mechanism that is legally enshrined in the decision of the Kyiv City Council of 14.11.2014 No.372/372), is hampered by the ignoring of this decision by the customers of repair works – structural units of district state administrations in Kyiv. As a result, the representative body of residents of a particular building, the housing association, which has information about the problems in the building and is a recipient of services, is informally deprived of the right to participate in the repair process.

The lack of practice of delegation of additional powers by the Kyiv City Council to the organizations that are institutionally capable of fulfilling them significantly limits the possibilities of the local self-government.

The participants of the roundtable recognized that the improvement of the activities of community self-organization bodies will be facilitated by:

– Adoption by the Kyiv City Council of a new version of the Statute of the territorial community of Kyiv;

– Implementation of a separate city target program to promote the development of condominiums in Kyiv;

– Reforming the model of self-organization of the population, which operates in the capital, since the CBOs with a significant number of residents are currently ineffective;

– Recognition of the priority out of 14 powers defined by the Law of Ukraine «On Self-Organization Bodies of the
Population» as promoting the improvement of the territory and control over the quality of services in the field of housing and communal services;

– Simplification of the procedure for election/re-election of the personal composition of the committee (house, street, neighborhood) and, accordingly, organization and holding of the meeting (conference) of residents at
the place of residence;

– strict adherence by CBOs to the principle of publicity, openness and transparency of the organization of their activities, as defined in Article 5 of the Law of Ukraine «On Bodies of Self-Organization of the Population» (informing residents through social networks or in other ways about their activities, not limited to reporting to authorized representatives of residents once a year);

– substantial improvement of the section «SBO» on the Internet portal of the Kyiv city authorities;

– establishing more effective horizontal interaction between neighborhood associations, creating communication platforms for sharing experience;

– creation of coordination councils on the issues of housing associations at the state administrations of Kyiv;

– training in fundraising and project activities to attract additional funds from third parties to implement local initiatives of the residents of the territory;

– Holding a forum of Kyiv self-organization bodies to discuss problematic issues in the activities of CBOs in a broad and thorough manner.

Video of the round table is available at.