The paper deals with the change in the employment and consumption behavior of the poor in Russia under the condition of the cancellation of the benefits for housing payments and the tariffs increase at the same time. The author uses the following sources for the empirical data sets: Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of  2001; VCIOM Monitoring (2000-2001); Materials of Goskomstat of the Russian Federation (2000-2001); the data base of the Independent Institute for Social Policy on the reform ofhousing and communal services, calculated on the basis of RLMS within the project of RAS «EES Russia».