Law No. 2189-VIII “On Housing and Utility Services.”

This Law regulates the relations arising in the process of providing and consuming housing and utility services. Housing and utility services shall be intended the result of the economic activities aimed at ensuring the living conditions and/or stay of persons in residential and non-residential premises, buildings and structures, complexes of buildings and structures in accordance with the norms, specifications, standards, procedures and rules implemented by virtue of the relevant contracts on the housing and utility services supply. Housing and utility services consumer shall be intended individual or collective consumer. The subject of regulation of this Law shall be relations arising in the process of providing consumers with management services of an apartment building, the heat energy supply, the hot water supply, centralized water supply, centralized drainage and household waste management, as well as relations arising in the process of the electricity and natural gas supply and distribution services in residential, manor, garden, country houses. Public policy in the field of housing and utility services is based on the following principles: (a) ensuring the rational use of available resources and sustainable development of settlements; (b) creating and maintaining of a competitive environment in the housing and utility services development and provision, ensuring control over the activities of natural monopolies; (c) ensuring the functioning of enterprises, institutions and organizations that produce, perform and/or provide housing and utility services, on the terms of self-financing, achieving the level of economically justified costs for the production of such services; (d) regulation of the prices/tariffs for the housing and utility services in cases determined by law, with consideration the achieved level of socio-economic development, the physical features of the relevant region and technical capabilities; (e) ensuring equal opportunities for access to the minimum standards of housing and utility services for consumers regardless of the social, property status, age of the consumer, location and ownership form of legal entities, etc.; and (f) observance of the standards, regulations, norms, procedures and rules for the quantity and quality of housing and utility services. The individual consumer is obliged to conclude contracts for the housing and utility services provision with the procedure and cases determined by law. The consumer pays for the consumed housing and utility services on a monthly basis, unless a different procedure and terms are determined by the relevant contract.