I hope that in the near future a mega-extra project will finally get off the ground, one that has taken up a huge amount of my time over the past year and a half. I just never had the time to launch it. We need to build a youth town. Yes, really. Nothing less. I even managed to persuade a whole bunch of people to take part. And they are completely different people, from completely different parts of the political spectrum. I’m proud that absolutely everyone signed the declaration. True, they are not party leaders but youth wing leaders, yet even that is something unprecedented in modern Russia. **Declaration of the Initiative Group for the Implementation of the “Youth Town” Project ** Russia is currently implementing the national project “Affordable Housing.” One of the project’s main stated goals is to provide housing for young families. The Government of the Russian Federation has developed a number of measures and proposals in this area, mostly aimed at stimulating mortgage lending. However, such measures often produce the opposite effect: rising housing prices, which makes the prospect of home ownership for young families even more remote. We are convinced that one of the program’s main objectives should be to find ways for young families to cooperate in order to build housing jointly, bypassing various investment and credit schemes. There are no market mechanisms that can force investors to sell apartments more cheaply, so our main task is to unite in order to avoid relying on their services. We, representatives of various political forces and public organizations, are joining together to implement, within the framework of the national project “Affordable Housing,” the experimental project “Youth Town.” Main elements of the project: • The creation by young families of a housing construction cooperative which, having received a plot of land from the state and a long-term loan for utility infrastructure, will build a settlement of individual homes for young people under the age of 35 who have been married for more than one year. • The project involves no investors or other beneficiaries. A young family contributes funds to the housing cooperative and receives a house at its construction cost, which according to our preliminary estimates will be approximately two to two and a half times lower than the market price. The task of the initiative group is to lobby for the project within executive government bodies through the organizations represented in the initiative group. We are convinced that, given political will on the part of the state, the project can be successfully implemented and may then be adopted by youth initiative groups across the country. Membership in the initiative group is open. Other representatives of youth organizations and movements are welcome to join. Yury Vyacheslavovich Afonin Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Secretary of the Central Committee; Union of Communist Youth, head Nikita Yuryevich Belykh Union of Right Forces, Chairman of the Federal Political Council, Chairman of the Commission on Youth Policy Konstantin Vasilyevich Voronkov Public movement “Civil Society,” Adviser to the Chairman of the Executive Committee Maria Yegorovna Gaidar Public movement “Democratic Alternative,” coordinator Dmitry Gennadyevich Gudkov People’s Party of the Russian Federation, coordinator for youth policy Sergey Vitalyevich Yevdokimov First Deputy Director for Strategic Planning to the Director of NTV’s prime-time broadcasting Vitaly Sergeyevich Zolochevsky LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), head of the Youth Center Yury Yuryevich Lopusov A Just Russia party, chairman of the youth branch, Chairman of the all-Russian youth public movement “Energy of Life” Anton Anatolyevich Nazarov Member of the Academic Council of the Faculty and of the Council of Academic Councils of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny Russian United Democratic Party “YABLOKO,” member of the Federal Council; public movement “Democratic Alternative,” coordinator Alexei Valeryevich Shaposhnikov Coordinator for the Central Federal District of the “Young Guard of United Russia,” Candidate of Legal Sciences (roughly equivalent to a PhD in law) Ilya Valeryevich Yashin, Russian United Democratic Party “YABLOKO” Leader of the youth branch