UrBC, Moscow, March 7, 2019. Russian State Duma adopted a bill to ban hostels in apartments and houses in the third and final reading on March 6, 2019. The news has by now been published at www.regulation.gov.ru.

The bill concerns the amendments to Article 17 (Part 3) of the Russian Federation Housing Code which complement the formula ‘setting up industrial production facilities within apartments or houses is not allowed’ with ‘or hotels’. Another clause has been introduced as well: ‘The use of an apartment in an apartment building as hotel accommodation is not allowed.’

This means that, to set up a hotel or a hostel in an apartment building, the space needs to get re-registered as commercial property first. Since commercial property must have a separate entrance, the recent amendments might affect every hotel and hostel located above the ground floor of an apartment building.

This also means that the space will have to have all the necessary equipment, noise insulation, fire safety appliances, alarm systems, safe deposit boxes, and cleaning supplies.

First Deputy Chair of the Housing Committee Sergey Pakhomov says the adoption of the bill was mainly driven by ‘an enormous deluge of complaints from home owners about full-scale hotel businesses operating at apartments next door.’

The committee’s chair Galina Khovanskaya agreed that ‘nearly every Duma deputy’ receives home owners’ complaints about hostels that fail to comply with either the sanitary or the fiscal regulations.

‘Most such hostels do not pay taxes and do not register as a business, and the situation is extremely difficult to deal with, since trespassing is forbidden by the Constitution,’ Khovanskaya said.