St. Petersburg To Allocate $64M For Mortgage Program

St. Petersburg will spend 1.92 billion rubles ($64 million) over the next decade to develop a mortgage-lending program. According to Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's press office, this amount has been included in the law On Developing Long-Term Housing Lending in St. Petersburg, which Yakovlev recently signed. The program will provide financial assistance to those who are currently waiting to receive city housing by providing them 10-year mortgages if they are able to make a down payment of no more than 50 percent of the cost of the apartment. Some program funding would also be used to subsidize interest rates for loans provided by other organizations. The program is designed to provide such assistance to 18,000 local families in the period from 2002 to 2012, the St. Petersburg Times wrote.