Tweet

People from 9-storied building have lived in the house which was not put into operation without legal documents on their apartments. Community Law Center at Chernihiv public committee on human rights protection helps people to improve the situation.

Residents from 36 apartments of multistoried building in Chernihiv came to the Community Law Center in the end of March 2014. They needed help to register the property rights on their apartments, but had difficulties with doing it in practice as the house was constructed in 1990s and had not been put into operation. Apartments belong to the residents but the house does not exist legally. The house was built by Chernihiv enterprise for its workers. Every worker made a financial contribution to obtain an apartment. They received documents, settled in their apartments and did not even think about property issues.

The situation was quite ambiguous, as half of the residents had the decision of local court acknowledging their property rights on construction materials according to the civil law. The rest of them did not have any documents that could confirm the ownership of an apartment.

After the Ukrainian legislation made possible to privatize rooms in hostels, and residents started learning how to privatize their apartments, it turned out that the house is not put into operation, and belongs neither to the enterprise nor to the communal property of city council. Collective appeal to the city council did not help residents as well.

The house residents decided to rely on lawyers’ professionalism.

Center’s lawyers studied the case and the legislation and made the conclusion that the only way out of this situation is negotiations with city council so that the city council accepts this house as its property, puts it into operation and gives permission to the residents to obtain property rights of the apartments.

City council agreed to help the community members after the negotiations. Lawyers of city executive committee filed a lawsuit together with Center's lawyers. Now the chances that the court’s decision will be positive for people are very high.

Thanks to the negotiations with city council and consultations with house residents the whole community obtained the chance to protect property rights.

Additional information: Community Law Centers are established with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework of “Human Rights and Justice” programme initiative. You can learn more on the Centers network activities, basics and principles of work here: www.legalspace.org