[Typology of elderly women by the nature of interaction with housing and communal services.]

The article proposes a social typology of elderly Russian women who are forced to adapt to the requirements of the housing and communal services sector, overflowing with problems and conflicts. The typology is based on a combination of the parameters of the adequacy of the reflection by the elderly of the problem situation surrounding them in the housing and communal services and the severity of their activity. The following types are identified: socially adequate and active (in defending personal and collective interests); socially adequate, but passive - a group of elderly people who understand well the level and quality of housing and communal services provided to them, but do nothing; socially inadequate, but active, charged with conflict with managers of the housing and communal sphere; socially inadequate and passive. Active and adequate activists with free time and the necessary competencies who are ready to represent the interests of all residents of an apartment building are singled out from among the elderly. This type of activist is trying to enter into a strategy of equal partnership with managers of the housing and communal services sector, but is faced with an unfriendly or indifferent environment, a formal bureaucratic approach of state regulatory organizations. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study was the consideration of old age as a period of disclosure, the manifestation of new opportunities in self-realization, manifested primarily in solving everyday problems.

[An older woman in the local community in Russia: the neighborhood, non-government organizations and the public utilities sector.]

The article probes into the development of local self-organization of retired women, actively involved in resolving housing issues at their place of residence in Saint-Petersburg. The socio-spatial approach to aging, also referred to as «aging in a place / in a community¼ serves the theoretical framework. This type of aging requires an active approach to the habitual environment of the elderly and their support. It is the groups of older women that generate activists who have free time and the necessary competencies and who are ready to promote the interests of all the residents of an apartment building, a neighborhood or a district. Therefore, the empirical basis of the article was mainly the materials of interviews with women activists. In the public utilities system full of intricate semi-legal schemes, invisible and incomprehensible to the majority of ordinary citizens, activists are not always able to enter into an equitable dialogue with the controlling bodies and public utilities managers. In order to make insignificant changes, older activists are sometimes required to take tremendous efforts and develop new competencies which help to overcome barriers and to defend the collective interests.