ABSTRACT
In the large cities of the USSR, housing is predominantly public, with some cooperative units and only a very few remaining privately owned single-family houses. The smaller the city, the higher the proportion of private houses. Public housing is heavily subsidized and rents are set way below the cost of maintenance, without even taking into consideration the amortization of construction costs. A good proportion of Soviet urban dwellers still live in communal apartments shared by several unrelated persons or even families. Others have to live in workers' dormitories, furnished with bunks, or sublet accommodations in private homes at rents ten times those charged by the state. Cooperative apartments account for a small proportion of the total and, again, are not exactly patterned on ours. The advantage of the co-op as against a rental is the possibility of having a larger and better-constructed apartment and getting it much sooner than one would by waiting in line for a rental.
