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Poland Housing after 1989
In 1990 Poland's traditionally low rents rose
drastically
when government subsidies of fuel, electricity, and
housing
maintenance ended. The long-term goal of housing reform
was to
let rents rise to market levels. A housing benefits
program was
to help the poorest groups in society, and new rules were
put in
place for financing housing purchases. In the transitional
period
that followed the end of communist government, however,
the gap
between demand and supply grew. Rising rental and purchase
prices, the new obstacles created for housing construction
firms
by competitive conditions, and the economic downturn that
began
in 1990 also contributed to this gap. To function
efficiently,
the housing industry also required more substantial
investment in
modern technology, particularly in chronically wasteful
areas
such as cement production and building assembly.
In 1989 and 1991, new housing legislation concentrated
on
privatizing the ownership of housing units. Of the 2.7
million
cooperative apartments in Poland, 57 percent were still
tenantoccupied rather than owner-occupied in 1991. An additional
1.5
million apartments were owned by enterprises, which
continued the
uneconomical communist system of subsidizing as much as 80
percent of the property upkeep for their tenant workers.
Beginning in 1989, private owners of multifamily houses
could
receive subsidies for maintenance, for which they had paid
in
full under the old system. The 1991 legislation set
financial and
legal conditions under which renters of cooperative-owned
and
enterprise-owned housing could assume ownership, creating
individual property units from the larger units formerly
administered by a central agency.
Data as of October 1992
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