Has your rent increased yet?
Eight years ago and several years thereafter I was able to comfortably live in
Kiev on $500 a month. That included feeding neighborhood children most evenings. Now I am faced with my rent being that much money alone. Several years ago the rent began shooting up rapidly. It is my opinion that it was from greed. The price of buying an apartment as well renting an apartment has greatly increased. Everywhere you look new huge apartment buildings are being built all over Kiev. Any inch of ground is being bought up for this purpose. You would think that they would be overbuilt by now but that isn’t the case. People are flocking to Kiev from the villages for jobs. They keep coming and coming. I jokingly say (but it may not be far from the truth) that all Ukrainians will live in Kiev and use their village home as a summer home.
Ukrainians may own their apartment but they must pay for the square footage of their home every month. This includes their gas payments. In the past many people ignored paying this largely because they couldn’t afford to pay it. I just heard a rumor that the mayor of Kiev has increased this bill 300 percent. Landlords are nervous and Lena told me tonight that several of her friends who are renting apartments had their rent raised by $100 this month. My landlord told me last month that my rent will be increasing. She was here today for the rent and praise God she didn’t raise the rent yet. But I think she is waiting to see how much the monthly bill will be raised before she decides how much. The bill didn’t get raised this month but we will see about it next month. My hope is that it will be just threats. They have said 2-3 times over the last few years that the cost of riding the metro, tram, and trolley will increase and each time the citizens were so against it that it was shelved. Hopefully it will be the case with this. But part of me thinks that it stems from the increase in gas prices as well as from people not paying their bills. Every summer the question is asked “Do you have hot water?” (They turn hot water off 2 weeks in the summer to clean the pipes.) Now the question is ” Has your rent increased yet? How much?”
