At a meeting of the Lutsk Press Club of Reforms, a presentation took place of the new project "Community Towards Shared Comfort," which operates within the framework of the Program for Support of Regional Think Tanks with financial support from the "Freedom House – Ukraine" foundation. Its implementation in Lutsk will be carried out by partner organizations: the Leon-Analytic Intellectual Service Consortium, the "European Lutsk" Public Coalition, the Lutsk Youth Council, and the Lutsk Press Club of Reforms.
Today, the sphere of providing housing and communal services elicits extremely negative feedback from citizens. The poor quality of such services is caused by several factors: the absence of an adequate regulatory and legal framework and the monopolization of this market segment. The project envisions an entirely new approach to solving the problem of reforming former housing maintenance offices (ZHEKs) by establishing intersectoral interaction "public-authorities-business" with the aim of protecting consumer rights. The model for reforming the sphere of housing services is aimed at creating a competitive and normatively regulated market for such services. To this end, it is planned to clarify several points: which services Lutsk residents are willing to pay more for and be confident in their quality provision; which business entities are potential market participants; what the legal framework should be for relations between "consumer – service provider – authorities." "We have no illusions that in five months of project implementation everyone will start receiving quality services, but pushing the authorities to act is our task," assured those present the coordinator of the "European Lutsk" Public Coalition, Oleksandr Ivanovych.
Within the framework of the project, the fulfillment of certain tasks is envisaged, in particular: research into problems in the sphere of providing housing services from the perspective of all consumers; analysis of problems in the functioning of public associations of homeowners and business structures that provide or will provide such services; development of a complex of systematized local legal framework, its lobbying and implementation for the optimization of the functioning of the housing services market; preparation of the management staff of business structures – participants in the housing services market – to work under new conditions, and so on.
The results of successful implementation of the project will be: an improved regulatory and legal framework for the housing services market, an increase in the number of effectively operating associations of co-owners of housing and building committees, expansion of the housing services market, improvement of the quality of provision of these services, reduction of the volume of consumer debt in payment for provided housing and communal services, and so on. "We expect from the implementation of the project quality provision of services and an increase in the level of protection of residents," reported the project manager, director of the Leon-Analytic Intellectual Service Consortium, Nataliia Zhurkina.