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By the years 2020-2025, the population of the Russian Far East may drastically fall by one third due to insufficient housing and poor living conditions, presidential envoy to the district Kamil Iskhakov revealed on Thursday at the Khabarovsk meeting devoted to the national project of development of housing construction.

The Russian Far East today has the lowest availability of housing accommodations in the country, stated participants at the meeting attended by the Far East regions’ governors and headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev who took a four-day working trip to the district.

According to Iskhakov, insufficient and costly housing results in people leaving the Russian Far East leading to a demographic problem which may potentially threaten to devastate the territory, a press statement from his office reported. For the past 15 years the population of the territory has plummeted by 20 percent, the envoy said.

“People leave since they do not find the living conditions they would like to have,” Iskhakov was quoted by the statement as saying. According to the envoy, the rate of population decreases in the territory has not slowed despite some improvements in social and economic development.

Addressing Medvedev, the envoy stressed that implementing the housing program in these depressive Far Eastern regions needs significant financial assistance from the federal budget.

For the initial six months of 2006, Iskhakov noted, only 257 million rubles ($9.5 million) was allocated from the federal budget for the district’s housing sector, with the funds going mostly for modernization of housing and communal services. No funds were allotted for providing young families with housing and creating housing infrastructure, the envoy stressed.

“As compared to 1990, the volumes of housing construction in the district decreased by almost five times,” Iskhakov was quoted by the press statement as saying. Currently, he said, about 400,000 families live in deteriorated and accident-prone buildings, and a tenth of families need improvement of their housing conditions.

According to the statement, for the first half of 2006, the construction volume for completed new housing accommodations accounted for only 28 percent of projections.

The situation, the envoy emphasized at the meeting, can be changed only with the federal government providing the Russian Far East’s regions with long-term credits for housing construction. The matter needs to be given utmost consideration by the federal government, Iskhakov stressed.