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THE CENTRAL ASIA FELLOWSHIP PAPERS No. 13, January 2016 The Central Asia Fellowship Papers No. 13, January 2016 Causes and Consequences of the Dysfunctionalities of the Housing Market in Dushanbe Xeniya Mironova Xeniya Mironova holds an MA in European Studies from the Yerevan State University and an MA in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication from the Russian–Tajik (Slavic) University. She worked as a Program Associate at the Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia – Tajikistan. She supported the program “Equal before the Law: Access to Justice in Central Asia”, which was designed to increase access to justice for vulnerable populations in Central Asia. After being a scholar and intern with the Initiatives of Change, Xeniya worked as a Project Consultant for the British communication agency “United World” and helped to prepare a country report on Tajikistan that was published by USA Today in March, 2015. She then worked as a Project Coordinator at the UN OHCHR where she managed and coordinated the UK Conflict Pool project “Building Capacities for Human Rights Monitoring, Protection and Advocacy in Tajikistan”. She then worked with the FAO UN. 1 THE CENTRAL ASIA FELLOWSHIP PAPERS No. 13, January 2016 In the beginning of 2015, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) examined the implementation of the corresponding treaty in Tajikistan. The committee assessed the progress made by the country in regards to the protection of economic, social and cultural rights in Tajikistan: it put on record the progress Tajikistan made and expressed concern and recommendations with respect to different disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), 2015). The next country review will be in 2020; again, it will be a critical moment for the Tajik authorities to show some commitment toward the most pressing economic, social and cultural issues the country faces. The housing market, as a part of the right to adequate housing, will be one of them. According to international human rights law, everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living, including the right to adequate housing, which the United Nations describes as “the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity” (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2014). This right covers a number of defined freedoms and entitlements, such as: protection against forced evictions and the arbitrary destruction and demolition of one’s home; the right to be free from arbitrary interference with one’s home, privacy and family; the right to choose one’s residence, to determine where to live and to freedom of movement; security of tenure; housing, land and property restitution; equal and non-discriminatory access to adequate housing; participation in housing-related decision- making at the national and community levels (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2014). Offering an adequate standard of living to its citizens is among the most important challenges for Tajikistan and its capital city, Dushanbe, in particular. The city’s housing market is severely ineffective: it lacks general housing-related infrastructure, has an inadequate supply of social housing, excessive real estate prices compared to significantly low wages, dependence of real estate prices on remittances sent by labor migrants, and gives preference to the construction of luxury estate, and to patronal relations. How is it possible to account for these dysfunctions? Are they structural or conjectural, political, economic, social, or purely technical and logistical? The dysfunction of Tajikistan’s housing market has not been studied before. The statistical data provided by the Agency of Statistics of the Republic of Tajikistan is incomplete and therefore unreliable, and thus information has to be collected from other sources. To offer a first take on this issue, I collected and analyzed real estate and rental prices in the capital city, interviewed local experts on micro-credit, another expert on legislation in Tajikistan, and a Social Service Centre worker, and looked at social media discussions around this issue and at cases of expropriation. After a short history of the capital city and its population, I explore several causes and consequences of the housing market’s dysfunction, such as population growth, civil war, internal migration, privatization, homelessness, the mortgage system, social housing, infrastructure, luxury housing, rental and real estate prices and remittances. Eventually, I conclude with some policy recommendations, which governments, civil society and international organizations may consider for the improvement of the housing market in Dushanbe. A Short History of the Capital City and its Population Tajikistan is a landlocked country with a territory of 143,100 km2, 93% of which is covered by high mountains (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2015). Because of this challenging geography, the country is complex for urban design; most of its cities, towns and villages are located in valleys, canyons and plateaus. Dushanbe is located in the Hissar Valley in the south of 2 THE CENTRAL ASIA FELLOWSHIP PAPERS No. 13, January 2016 Tajikistan. Some archeological evidence confirms the first human settlement as early as the 5th century BC. However, Dushanbe is a young city. It was only in 1924 that the Soviet regime decided to transform the small village of Dushanbe into the capital of the new Tajik Republic, then called Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The village was known for its Monday market that gives its name to the city, and marked by “one-storied, clay, red and raw-brick houses with crooked back streets” (Pirov, and Nazarshoev, 2003). Dushanbe is the embodiment of a Soviet city. Its main urban features—governmental buildings, initial housing, factories, and municipal infrastructure—were built during the Stalin era. This fact is symbolized by the change of name of the city, which was named Stalinabad from 1929 to 1961. The railway reached the city in 1929, and a first hydroelectric power station, located at Varzob, provided it with electric power. The style of Dushanbe in the late 1930s and early 1940s “was characterized by European neoclassicism in accordance with the directives of the then- current Soviet architectural theory” (Dodkhudoeva, Makimov, Hughes, 2014), built by architects and designers coming from Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev and Odessa. The main city street, Rudaki Prospekt, reflected this neoclassic style with its Presidential Palace, Parliament Building, Avicenna Tajik State Medical University, Sadriddin Ayni State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, Chaihona Rahat (Tea House), “Vatan” Cinema and other Stalinist style buildings. Soviet Architecture Icons: Sadriddin Ayni State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre Source: Asia-Plus News Agency Without any major historical cities located on its territory,1 Dushanbe embodies and highlights Tajikistan’s urbanization. At the Soviet census of 1926, only 10 percent of Tajikistan’s inhabitants lived in cities, and Dushanbe was hosting only 5,600 people. In 1959, the urban population rose to 33%, and in Dushanbe it constituted 224,242 people (Demoscop Weekly, 2015). As Glenn E. Curtis noted, “Between the 1959 and 1979 censuses, Tajikistan’s urban population more than doubled, while the rural population increased almost as rapidly. However, by the 1970s the rate of rural population growth had begun to outstrip that of urban areas. After reaching a peak of 35% in the 1979 census, the proportion of the urban population declined” (Curtis, 1996). 1 Bukhara and Samarkand, the two main historical cities of the region, with a bilingual Uzbek and Tajik speaking population, have been attributed to the neighboring republic of Uzbekistan. 3 THE CENTRAL ASIA FELLOWSHIP PAPERS No. 13, January 2016 Table 1: Dushanbe population growth, from 1926 to the present Year Population 1926 5,6002 1939 82,597 1959 224,242 1970 375,744 1979 493,528 1989 595,8203 1993 528,600 2010 728,8444 2014 788,7005 Dushanbe’s population evolved dramatically during Soviet decades, both in terms of numbers but also in terms of its ethnic composition. The city was truly cosmopolitan. According to the Soviet census of 1970, the number of urban ethnic Tajiks was only 99,184, compared with 157,527 ethnic Russians, out of a total of 375,744 people (Demoscop Weekly, 1970). Ethnic Germans alone numbered 50,000 (Ibbotson, Lovell-Hoare, 2013). Tajiks, Russians and Ukrainians resided all across Dushanbe, but some groups tended to live within their own communities; for instance, Koreans lived in the Sovetskii poselok (former central district and now, the Firdavsi district) and Bukharan Jews lived in the Putovskii rayon (now the central district). Dushanbe’s ‘ethnic’ districts at the Soviet period Sources: information compiled by the author. ©Rhys Young and Xeniya Mironova 2 Data provided by Encyclopaedia Iranica: Dushanbe, Capital and Most Populous City of Tajikistan (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dushanbe) 3 Demoscop Weekly. Vsesoyuznaya Perepis Naseleniya 1939 Goda. Vsesoyuznaya Perepis Naseleniya 1959 Goda. Vsesoyuznaya Perepis Naseleniya 1970 Goda. Vsesoyuznaya Perepis Naseleniya 1979 Goda (http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/census.php?cy=6)) 4 Numbers provided by the United Nations Data Retrieval System (http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=POP&f=tableCode%3A240) 5 Number provided by the Agency of Statistics under the president of the Republic of Tajikistan (http://www.stat.tj/en/database/socio-demographic-sector/)