Apartment buildings must be saved in the countryside of Latvia!

In the countryside, thousands of people live in apartment buildings built in Soviet times. They used to belong to collective farms, and the privilege of living in the new house belonged to front-line workers and party members. Over time, most of these houses, having lost their caretakers, changed the demographic and economic situation, have become more and more empty and are currently on the verge of collapse. Merdzene is a small village on the side of the highway, 10 kilometers from the county center Kārsava. Four three-story and one two-story residential house were built there in the center of the former collective farm according to the standards of that time. These apartment buildings welcome Latvijas Radio with laundry on the balconies and loggias, chimneys, satellite antennas near the windows as proof of the life that still reigns here. The three-story house on the side of the road, located at the very end of the street, contrasts sharply with the recently built building complex of Merdzenes school. Many windows of the 18-apartment building are currently covered with polyethylene film, entrance doors and balcony fences are broken, and the walls of the house are covered with a layer of greenish-gray mold. But it turns out that people live there too. Only seven apartment owners pay for management, which is less than half. Four apartment owners have died, but their relatives are in no hurry to settle the inheritance matters. Jānis Kolčs, manager of Merdzene parish, says – it just seems that the fate of this house, determined by none other than its residents, becomes clearer every winter – it is doomed to perish. “In the days of the kolkhoz, when privatization came, people privatized apartments in this house, which at that time had both water supply and sewerage, as well as central heating. Now, from this house, each other owns private houses, but the apartment is kept as a reserve with the idea that it will be useful to someone. There are also apartments where the owner has died, but the relatives are in no hurry to inherit, and it is impossible to force them to do so. We talked to them, but they are still not part of the inheritance. As a result, the house accumulates debts. See the full version of the article here