As Kommersant found out, the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, perhaps for the first time together appealed to President Vladimir Putin with a request to allocate additional funding to provide their employees with housing. Prosecutors ask for about 19 billion rubles, and the investigators — for 7.6 billion rubles. Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Finance, which received the appeal, believe that to meet the needs of the two departments, it is necessary to amend the legislation to ensure that investigators and prosecutors, just like the police, would  receive not service apartments but one-time social allowances for the purchase or construction of housing.

A letter with a request for "improvements of housing conditions for prosecutors and investigators"signed by Yuri Chaika and Alexander Bastrykin was sent Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the letter, as of December 1, 2016, among 50,000 prosecutors with experience of at least ten years, 3,690 claimed to get a flat.
To provide them with housing, according to an additional letter to the Prosecutor General, 19 billion rubles are needed. On average, a family of the prosecutor's office member consisting of three persons needs about 5 million rubles of social benefits for buying or building a house.  As the prosecutor's office says, similar calculations were made to provide housing to police officers.

Note that in the Investigative Committy with a regular number of a little over 20 thousand there are almost as many persons in the list for apartments (3,800). However, this department needs a much more modest sum: only 7.6 billion rubles. The significant difference in numbers, according to Kommersant, is due to the fact that the Investigative Committee based its calculations upon a single person rather than a family of three. 

As explained to Kommersant in both departments, the situation with the provision of housing for employees of the Prosecutor General Office and the Investigative Committee is about the same. The budget under the Housing federal target program for 2015-2020, provides funds that are acquired exclusively for service apartments. Thus, in 2015 the Prosecutor's Office was given 464.3 million rubles to make perchases, in 2016 — 405,8 million rubles. 163, and 127 apartments were purchased, accordingly. The Investigative Committee didn't provide such information.

When leaving the prosecutor's office or the Investigative Commitee, their employees are required to give back the service housing. It is regulated by law "On the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation" and "On the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation." Both departments say that the existing laws with regard to the provision of housing are virtually non-functioning. "Transfer of service apartments to private property is an exceptional case, and quite a few employees are qualified to claim it," a source in the Investigative Committee told Kommersant. The corresponding decision was taken at the level of department head. In turn, the Prosecutor General's Office noted that for other departments, including the Interior Ministry, a mechanism for the allocation of social one-time payments for the purchase of an apartment or building a house has long been legally defined. "This solution allows the employee to buy housing instead of living in a service apartment. Moreover, cash payments substantially expand the capabilities of employees with regard to choosing a location and form of the housing. Perhaps, the emloyee has no plans to live in the region they currently work in after retirement," said the head of the main provision of the organs and organizations of the Prosecutor's Office of the General Prosecutor's Office Sergey Sergeev to Kommersant.

Now, there are no other ways to provide apartments to the prosecutors and from the budget. It is in this context and Mssrs. Chaika and Bastrykin announced their initiative to amend the law, which would give their subordinates the right to receive "one-time social payment" for the purchase of an apartment or building a house at the expense of funds allocated from the budget. "We believe that the one-time social payment for the purchase or construction of housing, of course, is preferable to temporary service housing, but the current law does not provide for that," said Mr. Sergeev.

The Ministry of Construction or the Ministry of Finance have nothing against corresponding changes in the legislation. But so far, as noted the Ministry of Economy, the problem of improving the living conditions of prosecutors and investigators "should be solved at the expense and within the budget allocations from the federal budget, the prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee". In this case the prosecutor's office said that during the transition stage they are ready to consider allocating funds to their employees for the purchase of apartments or building houses at the expense of already received funds from the budget.