2022-12-13 · Facebook (in Russian)

The on-call phone under my pillow

When we were creating Liga ZhKKH, 12 years ago, I had to be the dispatcher myself and keep the on-call phone under my pillow at night, so that in case of an emergency I could pick up and take the request.

Then you get in the car yourself and drive to the building with the keys to the basement, calling around along the way for an emergency plumber who is willing to come. There is no emergency plumber on staff, so you call the first one: he's been drinking. The second: he's out of town. The third agrees.

You deal with issuing bills to residents yourself. Lists of residents with phone numbers in a spreadsheet on your computer.

If an old pipe burst and flooded an expensive renovation in an apartment, everything the management company had earned could go toward covering the costs. There was no liability insurance.

Today it is much easier to create a management company or a homeowners' association. Infrastructure has appeared that lets you build a business.

We see that the number of management companies and homeowners' associations in the country grows every year. Starting a business servicing apartment buildings will become as normal as opening a car repair shop or a café. Competition will come, residents' communities will be able to choose whom to entrust their building to, and those buildings will get a chance to become more pleasant places to live

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Translated from Russian. First published on Facebook on December 13, 2022.