Decided on 16 January 2014
Relevant Articles: Article 41 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
In 1989 the first applicant started working in a State-owned seaside health resort in Anapa. A year later the resort’s management allowed the applicants to occupy two rooms in a former administrative building. By a decision of the resort’s trade union committee of 24 October 1991, the first applicant was officially assigned housing rights to those premises. A year later a State body supervising the resort decided to assign the status of a dormitory to the administrative building in which the first applicant and her son lived. However, the proceedings by which the status of the administrative building was to be changed were not completed. At the same time, pursuant to a decision of the Head of the Anapa City Council the applicants and other inhabitants of the dormitory registered, on a permanent basis, their housing rights to the premises they occupied in the dormitory building.
In 2001 a new director of the resort, which by that time had been transformed into a private joint-stock company, “Golden Beach Resort”, lodged an action against the applicants seeking their eviction. On 21 November 2001 the Anapa Town Court dismissed the action, having found that the applicants had been lawfully provided with the premises, which they had established as their place of permanent residence. The first applicant had duly paid the rent and, with the consent of the resort’s management, had improved the state of the premises by installing a sewage system and carrying out renovation works. The Town Court noted that “it was impossible to evict the applicants without providing them with other housing premises” (by the owner).
In July 2009 Ms A. lodged an action with the Anapa Town Court, seeking annulment of the applicants’ registration in the housing premises and their eviction. The applicants lodged a counterclaim, asking the court to declare the sale and purchase agreements in respect of the resort property null and void and to uphold their right to live in the housing premises.
In a judgment delivered on 2 October 2012 the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 6 of the Convention in view of the bailiffs’ failure to enforce a final judgment issued against a private company and ordering the applicants’ resettlement from the accommodation they were occupying at the time to another flat. The Court also found that the applicants’ eviction from their home, which was effected in the absence of any legal basis and in violation of the final court judgment, ran counter to the guarantees afforded by Article 8 of the Convention.
The applicants claimed the current market price of a flat of the same size and in the same district of Anapa which they had occupied prior to their eviction. 14. The applicants further claimed the cost of construction, maintenance and repair works carried out by them in their former accommodation upon the authorisation of the former owner of the house and the housing maintenance authorities. The applicants explained that they were unable to provide invoices for every purchase they had made or service they had commanded as those documents had been lost or misplaced during their forced eviction. The applicants also sought compensation of the cost of a room in a hotel they had rented following their eviction.
Finally, the applicants claimed the aggregated costs of stress relief medication, installation of a telephone line and Internet services and personal belongings damaged or lost during the applicants’ eviction. As regards the latter claim, the applicants provided the Court with copies of bailiffs’ reports containing a long list of personal belongings, including furniture, clothes, books, technical equipment and electrical appliances, taken from their home on the day of the eviction and left in the yard near the building. The applicants also produced photographs depicting the outcome of the eviction proceedings. As can be seen in the photographs, the applicants were forced to live in the street with their furniture and personal belongings scattered all over the street in front of the building from which they had been evicted. Signs declaring the applicants’ ownership and warning off possible thieves were posted on the scattered belongings. The applicants explained that for three months following the eviction their property had been left outside the house, until representatives of the Anapa Town Council had agreed to move it to a garage in the Town Council building. Since then they have had no access to their belongings. They submitted a copy of a letter sent to the mayor of Anapa in March 2013 in which they requested access to their property.
For these reasons, the court, unanimously, holds that within three months from the date on which the judgment becomes final the respondent State shall secure, by appropriate means, the enforcement of the judgment of 25 July 2012 made by the Anapa Town Court in the applicants’ favour: Ms A. should provide the applicant with a two-room flat “suitable for permanent residence”. Ms A. was also ordered to pay 126,000 Russian roubles (RUB) in compensation for the cost of the applicants’ stay in the hotel after their eviction and to bear the costs of the applicants’ accommodation, pending the enforcement of that judgment. The court holds that the respondent State is to pay the claimed amount for pecuniary damage, non-pecuniary damage, the costs and expenses as well as any tax that may be chargeable to the applicants on the above amounts.
Read the case 69037/10
