The problem of restoring houses in Mykolaiv: what has changed in six months?

Six months ago , we wrote about the problem of restoring residential buildings in Mykolaiv. Back then, we covered three high-rise buildings: 43 Pogranchina, 54 Krylova and 32 Admiralska. These are three stories of buildings that survived the Russian missile strike and have since begun their recovery.

However, the problem of reconstruction in each of these buildings is different. «NikVesti» tracked how the situation has changed over the past six months and what the future holds for the residents of the high-rise buildings.

There are only two certificates to be dismantled. What about Pogranichna?

Residents of the destroyed building at 43 Pogranichna Street are still waiting for it to be rebuilt. A rocket hit the five-storey building in October 2022. Seven people died, including an 11-year-old boy.

On that day, the Russians fired three missiles: two fell near the house, and the third hit the apartment block itself, says resident Tatiana. At the time, she, her husband and son were at home in their second-floor apartment.

«"I heard the first hit in bed, watching TV. It was a dull explosion, not like usual. My husband was sleeping next to me, and my son was in the next room. We were saved by a blanket that stopped the glass (during the first explosion - author's note), otherwise we would have been injured by shrapnel. We all jumped up and ran into the corridor, not even putting on our slippers. Everything was covered in dust, there was nothing to breathe. All three of us stood in the corridor, hugged each other tightly, and in 5-6 seconds the second impact happened. It was so powerful that we sat down. Then we heard cries for help - it was the father of the boy from the first floor, who later died»," the woman recalls those events.

After that, the family went down to the ground floor, where they heard cries for help. However, they were unable to help the residents trapped in the rubble on their own, Tatiana recalls.

«"The boy's mother was screaming a lot. My son grabbed his phone and ran forward. He said «mum, I can't help, the slabs are too heavy». I told him «son, don't touch it, so you don't make it worse». And the boy Artem looked at me with his eyes and said «I'm so hurt, help me»," the resident recalls.

The woman immediately tried to call rescuers, but, she recalls, it was difficult to do so because of the large amount of dust that had been kicked up in the air.

«"I came out of the entrance, tried to dial the services, and then the third plane arrived. We hid behind the green door and the debris started to fall. And when I looked up, I was hysterical from the picture I saw. I screamed so loudly that my voice went»," says Tatiana.

It has been 1.5 years since the rocket attack on the five-storey building. During this time, people have returned to the surviving first and second entrances of the building, but only «some have nowhere to live», the woman says.

«"The first and second entrances are usable and people were even allowed to move in - water, gas and electricity have been supplied there»," she added.

The other two entrances are planned to be dismantled. Initially, it was only about 12 apartments on the 3-5 floors of the building, according to the decision of the Executive Committee of the Mykolaiv City Council of 24.05.2023.

Currently, no one lives in the 3rd and 4th floors: all the residents temporarily live elsewhere, and left the keys to their own homes with Tetiana for safekeeping. Even the surviving apartments are dangerous to be in, she says, as there is a lot of construction debris above them.

The woman says that the housing and communal services department of the city council, despite the decision of the executive committee, is going to dismantle all two entrances of the building, which means 40 apartments instead of 12.

«I spoke to a lawyer who said that the agreement I was urged to sign concerns those apartments that were destroyed and are listed in the executive committee's decision, not those that survived. In «Дія» my apartment is actually intact, only the windows and doors were damaged. Most of the apartments are just like that. And the destroyed apartments may have to give their consent, but not us. If I give my consent, it is a consent to the dismantling of my property. According to the decision of the executive committee, they were supposed to dismantle the destroyed apartments and stairs, and then look at it. The builders who were dismantling the rubble said that it would be impossible to restore it, because it was a brick house, not a panel house. I and several other people did not give their permission. In our application, we argued that our apartments were not on the list of the executive committee's decision»," says Tetiana.

However, the change in the number of apartments to be dismantled is purely due to a technical error, explained Ihor Nabatov, first deputy director of the city council's housing and communal services department.

«"The technical report envisages the complete dismantling of the 3rd and 4th entrances. There is an appendix from an expert organisation that provides technical inspection. At the time when the decision was made by the executive committee, the conclusion sounded like this in one part and slightly different in the other part. We sent the documents to the regional commission for technical and industrial safety and received the appropriate approval. Then we saw that there was a point of discrepancy and received additional documents from the expert organisation»," said Igor Nabatov.

"The department is currently waiting for the decision of the executive committee to be amended. «We will do this in the near future, because there is every chance to ensure the dismantling of these entrances», assured Igor Nabatov. He added that these two entrances are no longer suitable for living.

«According to information from the expert organisation, there are even sinkholes in the 3rd entrance on the first and second floor. Therefore, it is not entirely true to say that it is possible to continue living there. As for the fourth entrance, it may indeed seem that it is possible to live there somehow, because the lower apartments of the fourth entrance were not actually damaged. But the design is such that the expert organisation said it was necessary to dismantle»," said Igor Nabatov.

A total of 23 applications for housing certificates have been submitted by the residents of the house, of which 5 are still under consideration, says Igor Nabatov. If two more apartments send in their applications for a housing certificate and buy a new home, the department will be able to dismantle the entrances, he explained.

«"There were not many refusals, I think four, but out of these four refusals, two apartments have already applied and received the certificate. Two more apartments have not applied for and received»," Nabatov clarified.

After the dismantling of the two entrances, the house is to be examined to see if it can be rebuilt, the housing department explained.

«"We told people, although we cannot promise, that after the dismantling, all the remaining structural elements will be examined, and then we will be able to make a final decision on the possibility or impossibility of restoring»," said Igor Nabatov.

This is the third examination of the building on Krylova Street. Why?

Today, the situation with the panel house at 54 Krylova Street is more clear. For almost two years now, the house has been standing without a single floor, continuing to collapse from the inside. The enemy's S-300 completely destroyed the 10th to 5th floors of the seventh entrance.

A year and a half after the arrival, both the housing department and the residents themselves conducted two examinations, which gave two opposite answers: dismantling and restoration. That's why the Housing and Communal Services Department ordered a third expert examination, which should soon give a final answer, says Olena, the head of the condominium board.

«"According to the first examination, the seventh entrance had to be dismantled and the sixth had to be restored. Because there, too, a part of the upper two flats was damaged. This was the plan they were going to follow. We were waiting for the department to make a project there. But the residents of the seventh entrance opposed the dismantling. They could be understood at the time, because it was unclear how the certificate system worked. People were nervous. They disagreed, opposed it, and ordered a second expert examination at their own expense. It showed that it was possible to restore the seventh entrance. And the department is ordering a third examination. This time, as they say, it's a clarifying one. But, unfortunately, I still think that the entrance should be dismantled. It has been standing without a roof for two years. Or rather, it survived two winters. And the collapses have already begun. Recently, literally, the residents of the sixth entrance felt something falling. We went and looked, called the experts. We called the department. There seemed to be nothing critical. If we had started to restore it from the very beginning, it might have been possible to save it. But as it was, it took a long time and was boring. And, of course, they went in violation of»," says Olena.

Currently, the residents of the destroyed apartments at 54 Krylova Street are partially receiving certificates for new housing. But not all of them. This issue is pending for residents of apartments from the 1st to the 4th floor, because according to the second examination, they were not damaged.

«"Some of those who applied for a certificate have already bought apartments from us. The only thing that has happened now is that according to the second examination, the lower floors from 1 to 4 seem to be intact. Therefore, until the conclusions of the third examination are available, they cannot receive certificates. This is, of course, a collapse. The other issue is that some people's documents are not in order. You can get a certificate only if the apartment is registered in the latest state registers, and there are some apartments that have not been privatised. They are in trouble there. I don't know how they are going to deal with them»," she explained.

The conclusions of the third expert examination will also determine whether other residents of the building, whose homes were partially damaged by the blast wave, will receive any compensation. One of them is Gennadiy Hrymov, a rock musician from Mykolaiv who lives in the sixth entrance on the tenth floor of the building.

In his apartment, under the threat of the Russian army's shelling, he spent the entire year of 2022 writing new music, which he now performs across Ukraine and raises funds for the Armed Forces.

«I wrote music here under bombardment, basically every day at home. Anxiety, not anxiety, but I was sitting with my headphones on. We were also at home that night. My wife was sitting in the kitchen right in front of the window, reading the news on Instagram. And just then, it was like a bang, all the glass shattered, and she wasn't wearing a single thing. She was thrown away. The impact caused my balcony to sink down, and there was a crack. They say it's a crack along the seam. The neighbouring apartment is already in disrepair. A man was taken out of there. It's a nightmare for him there, everything is leaking. In other apartments, the ceilings have collapsed. They are already falling down at night, sometimes something falls there. I'm in limbo. I can't do any repairs because I don't understand what will happen. But I can't really imagine how they will demolish a two-storey house on one foundation, where the floor slabs go into the apartments. I don't know how it will be»," the man says.

The third examination should put the final point on the issue of restoring the building at 54 Krylova Street, says Igor Nabatov, First Deputy Director of the Housing and Communal Services Department.

«"We ordered the third technical report from the Kyiv institute that currently maintains technical specifications and helps in the design of prefabricated houses in general»," said Ihor Nabatov.

"The department is currently waiting for the results of the third inspection of the building - they are due this month. Only then will it be clear what to do with the house next.

If the examination is of high quality and shows that the house is subject to restoration, as Dmytro Bezdolnyi, Director of the Housing and Communal Services Department, explained earlier to «NikVesti», the only thing that can be done is to order a project to restore the house and offer donors to implement it.

«But the cost of implementation will be very expensive. Many people, not understanding the subtleties, say that it is cheaper to restore than to build. This is not true.» Because in order to restore, you have to dismantle it first and then build it," added Dmitry Bezdolny.

However, the restoration of the high-rise building at 54 Krylova Street is complicated by the fact that it is a panel building, says Bezdolnyi: «"Panel houses are not being restored in Ukraine. There was even a law passed at the legislative level that prohibited this».

Prior to that, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed to consider the possibility of removing panel houses across the country during the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

And the Verkhovna Rada even adopted in the first reading the draft law No. 6458 «On the implementation of comprehensive reconstruction of quarters (neighbourhoods) of outdated housing stock». It is according to this draft law that panel houses are to be dismantled. However, the initiators of the bill explain that before that, residents must receive new housing.

In the past six months, the situation with refusals to dismantle the house has changed somewhat. There are already those who have received a housing certificate, says Igor Nabatov.

«"We had refusals to dismantle, people stood their ground and wanted full reconstruction. There were about 20 refusals, of which there is one apartment that did apply and has already received a housing certificate. There are also 8 apartments that also refused to be dismantled earlier, and now they have applied for a certificate but have not yet received it»," he added.

"This applies only to those residents who previously refused to dismantle. In total, residents have submitted 14 applications for a housing certificate, of which 5 have already received it and 9 are still waiting.

«All the certificates that have been issued are for the upper floors, about which we had no doubts based on the results of the first and second technical reports»," added Igor Nabatov.

A house on Admiralska Street is waiting for a project

Residents of 32 Admiralska Street are currently the only ones who are confident that their home will be restored. Over the past few months, they have received a positive decision from an independent expert assessment that they ordered on their own, and now they are waiting for the restoration, says Viktor Zagoruy, a resident of the house and a Mykolaiv-based builder.

«"We ordered the expertise and it gave us the answer from the first time that the house could be restored. We also paid for it. It was our initiative. All the residents arrived a week after the arrival and decided to have the expertise done at a meeting. As a builder, I understand the situation a little. But we needed a clear answer as to whether the house was rebuildable. Initially, we decided to overhaul the building, but we needed to change the structure, which is reconstruction. Overhaul was easier to do, but reconstruction is a bit more complicated. That's why the architecture took a break, but they have to give their consent to the reconstruction of this building. At the end of the month, there will be a session of the city council to decide on the inclusion of this house in the socio-economic development programme for the design of»," says Viktor Zagoruy.

At the beginning of the war, almost no one lived in the house on Admiralska Street because the hotel «Ingul» was destroyed by an air strike next door and the residents were worried about possible repeated strikes. Today, some people live abroad, others in other cities of Ukraine or rent accommodation in Mykolaiv.

«Here, a third of the people left immediately. If there had been more people in the house that night, everyone would have been dead. The only one more or less intact was the first entrance. It looked normal from the outside, but the doors were blown out from the inside, and the roof was all cracked. My apartment didn't burn down only because we had a cast-in-place floor. And I want to note that despite the fact that the residents of this destroyed building have the right to receive a housing certificate, no one wants to. All the residents want to live here. Not a single person has agreed to a certificate»," assures Viktor Zagoruy.

Viktor Zagoruy hopes that in October next year they will be able to start construction, which will last up to six months. Meanwhile, the Housing and Communal Services Department is working on developing the terms of reference, says Artem Sapozhnyk, deputy director of the department. «This is the first stage that precedes the contract for design work itself», he added. The project itself is going to be implemented at the expense of the city budget - it will cost about UAH 1 million.

«The project with the expertise will be ready this year. That's for sure. It is realistic and needs to be done. It is estimated that it will take 5-6 months»," added the deputy director of the housing and communal services department.

The department says they plan to restore the house not by overhauling it, but by reconstruction. "The goal is not just to restore the building to its previous condition, but also to «improve its characteristics»," added Artem Sapozhnyk.

«"You saw that the fourth entrance is not there at all. And the other three, which seem to be there, are quite damaged. All the interior finishes, let's say, need to be designed and made anew: the ceilings, beams, and roof,», he said.

However, it is currently unknown where the funds for the reconstruction will come from. So far, the department is considering two options: at the expense of international partners or the state budget.

Another problem on the way to solving the reconstruction of the house was «legal obstacles» regarding the possibility of introducing contracts for reconstruction, says Igor Nabatov, deputy director of the department.

«For your understanding: this reconstruction must be reflected in the programme of socio-economic development. This is the decision of the session. Without these changes, we simply won't be able to conclude the contract»," he said, adding that the next session of the city council will have to approve the relevant changes.

In this article, we followed the situation with the restoration of a number of apartment buildings in Mykolaiv that were destroyed by Russian army shelling, including

1. a five-storey building at 43 Pogranichna Street, which was damaged on 13 October 2022. The authorities intend to dismantle the third and fourth entrances. This will be done if the residents of two more apartments receive certificates for new housing.

2. The 7th entrance of the high-rise building at 54 Krylova Street, which was damaged on 30 September 2022. Residents expect to receive a final answer by the end of April this year on whether the building can be restored or not.

3. a three-storey building at 32 Admiralskaya Street, which was damaged on 20 July 2023. The housing office promises to develop a reconstruction project by the end of the year, and then look for funds for the work.

In all three cases, the issue of restoring the destroyed high-rise buildings is moving rather slowly. During this time, some residents who previously refused to have their homes demolished and did not even consider obtaining certificates, insisting on restoration, have already received them. While the situation with the house on Admiralska Street is more or less clear - it is going to be restored, the situation with the houses on Pogranichna and Krylova streets remains unresolved even after six months.

Given the position of the city authorities, it can be assumed that the house on Pogranichna is still going to be dismantled, and only an expert examination will be able to give a final answer on the house on Krylova. In any case, we will continue to monitor the situation with these three houses.

Yulia Boychenko, Alisa Melik-Adamyan, «NikVesti»