Elections are approaching, which means that every morning and every evening in your building entrance you’ll be greeted by the smug face of the United Russia candidate running in your district.
In my building entrance, for example, the “journalist” Pyotr Tolstoy from Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel) has moved in.
As usual before elections, Moscow City Hall installs one or two “information boards” in every building entrance, and they are used primarily for illegal campaigning on behalf of United Russia.
It’s a pretty powerful tool—and an effective one. Official statistics say Moscow has more than 73,000 residential buildings. And the United Russia poster sits behind glass and under lock and key, so you can’t tear it down, while everyone else can only tape up notices that the janitors will promptly rip off.
In my building, they put up no fewer than two “information boards” at each entrance—one inside and one outside.
Many of us assume this is all perfectly legal, and that City Hall, the district administration, or the prefecture can hang whatever they want in a building entrance. Especially since these boards do sometimes serve a useful purpose—management companies occasionally post notices on them.
But in 99% of cases, both the boards themselves and the notices on them—whether ordinary advertising or United Russia propaganda—are completely illegal. Crooks in City Hall and in management companies profit from them.
These boards are mounted on the walls of residential buildings, which are the shared property of the residents. That means they can only be used with the residents’ collective consent and under a contract between the advertiser and the building management company.
The management company is supposed to get your permission before installing these boards, and then pass on part of the advertising revenue to you. In any case, these are formal decisions involving property and money—they cannot legally be made without the residents.
Every time they put up boards like these in my building entrance, I made them tear them down, because they are never set up properly.
I very much doubt there are even a hundred buildings in Moscow where residents themselves actually benefit from advertising placed in entrances and elevators. And yet this advertising supposedly hangs there “officially” in every building. It only looks official.
During election season, everything gets worse: residents lose out on money that could be coming to them from party and candidate advertisers, while United Russia gets a huge free resource for campaign propaganda.
So, anyone who wants to drive the United Russia candidate out of their building entrance can:
Use the ACF service and demand that all advertising and illegal information boards be removed from your building entrance altogether.
Use my complaint as a template and file a complaint with the Moscow Housing Inspectorate, which is required to carry out regional state housing oversight to ensure compliance with the rules governing the maintenance of common property in apartment buildings—and to get this visual trash removed.
You can submit it through the Moscow Housing Inspectorate’s online reception office: http://mgi.mos.ru/feedback/reception/