Alicja:Where in Poland will we see this? When will it happen?
Joanna:Actually, this is already happening in Chrzanów. As far as housing is concerned, it will still take some time. In my opinion, the cycle will look more or less like this: rising housing prices in large cities will push out people currently entering adulthood, who, most likely, after the birth of their first child, may find it sensible to move to the city of their origin or to another city of their choice, where they will have access to kindergarten, the opportunity to buy or rent an apartment larger than a two-bedroom. Along with them, office buildings will cease to be necessary, because probably most of the people who will move out in this mode will be the remote workers who previously fueled all those office buildings. Instead, coworking spaces will be established in smaller cities. Well, and it's only in the next cycle that we'll revitalize these buildings, when it turns out that they can't continue to be leased for offices.
Susanna: I thought you were going to say that we'll revitalize them when it turns out that it's impossible to live in a small city and those people will come back :)
Joanna: No, they won't come back. The next generations will come back.
Prefabricated housing estate in Torun, Okólna Street, PFR Nieruchomości (design: S.A.M.I Architekci, construction: Pekabex Bet)
photo: PFR Nieruchomości
Zuzanna: I foresee the popularization of sklotching, not necessarily the typical anarchist kind, but more pragmatic, like it was in the Netherlands, or is in western Ukraine now. We need housing, if there are empty buildings standing, we just take them over. In the Netherlands at one point this was systemically regulated and called antikraak. Vacant buildings slated for renovation or demolition are rented out at very low prices. These are not only residential buildings, but also schools, universities, office buildings. A person, by living there and, in a sense, taking care of the building, agrees that the notice period, for example, due to a demolition decision, is relatively short (two weeks or so). In return, he can live very cheaply in the city center and have a great space. I see a lot of potential for such solutions.
Alicia: The ZGN's response time to the skłoting can be quite long.
Joanna: If the neighbors don't report, they will probably only discover it from their bills, such as water consumption. But that probably also depends on ZGN.
Susanna: It's interesting that there is no problem with providing such premises for art studios, which operate on exactly the same principle as apartments for renovation. But there is a problem with housing.
Joanna: A mental problem.
Susanna: The apartment has to be decent.
Prefabricated housing estate in Toruń on Okólna Street, PFR Nieruchomości (design: S.A.M.I Architekci, construction: Pekabex Bet).
Photo: PFR Nieruchomości
Joanna: As CoopTech Hub, we are now developing a model of urban development cooperatives, which could be an opportunity to mobilize resources in the city, including vacant land, using the potential offered by community work and the involvement of private resources. The city government could create a municipal development cooperative, in which people would invest their time and money, and the city government would be obliged, for example, to hand over vacant properties that have not been able to be rented for the last three months, or for which there are no funds in the current budget for renovation. Because we are told that there is no money to renovate the premises, but we are also denied action because there is supposedly no legal formula for doing so. And yet there is. We don't need to do a public-private partnership (which is directed at big business), we just need tools that will create city-creating solutions. A good example is what is happening in Torun.
The M6 Foundation operates in a private building at 6 Mostowa Street. A member of its board is Malgorzata Janas, who runs a property management company with her mother. As a manager, she reaches agreements with private owners, who are helped to find funds for expensive revitalization renovations and benefit from them, and in return are allowed to use the space in question. Margaret also acts as a probation officer in cases where a property is blocked for inheritance reasons. They act this way, for example, at 112 Mickiewicza Street, in a very nice revitalized neighborhood. They rent a large premises at a cost that it should contribute to the community budget, and run a psychological office, a counseling center, and a screen-printing studio there. Elsewhere, they create residential units for rent on the same terms. Pure profit - the space doesn't stand empty, it has caretakers, it's renovated and taken care of, and the community doesn't suffer a financial loss from this (because, after all, everyone contributes to the rent of an empty unit).
Zuzanna:The Szczecin TBS operates in such a diverse, hybrid model. Not only does it have public housing in its stock and manage it, it administers community buildings, but it also revitalizes entire quarters of urban housing. In such a quarter we have a great social mix: social, communal and ownership apartments plus well-kept common spaces.
Joanna:Yes, this is a very interesting model of operation, going in the direction of designing the apartment as infrastructure, as Agata Twardoch talks about and also as you wrote about with Kamil Trepka. When you think quarterly, you focus on the city as a space that is meant for living and leading a quality life. Not one whose main element is working to pay off a loan.
Susanna: Nowadays, one thinks of individual apartments as abstract capital investments, some kind of cryptocurrency, making the fabric they form unstructured and undefined. Thinking of housing as infrastructure helps to organize it spatially and assign it to a place, just like a road or a type of social infrastructure. This also translates into caring about such realizations and community thinking.
Joanna: Similarly, the slogan "housing a right, not a commodity" can be non-urban, non-urbanizing. Because it doesn't specify where this housing should be. In a vacuum? Thinking in abstract terms, one does not take into account hidden costs, commuting or lack of services.
Alicia: Housing as infrastructure sounds like a huge financial burden for local governments.
Joanna:But there are appropriate sources of financing for this, for example, lines of credit, one of which is run by BGK, for example. I don't know why this is being forgotten. The European Investment Bank also finances complex projects. Analysis for such a project was recently done by Chrzanow. However, there is still a belief that there are no funds for housing. This is due to ignorance. Recently, the Left Party announced its housing program, postulating the creation of a national housing program, which, after all, does exist. What's more, the housing development on which this program was announced was built as part of the writer's housing package with BGK funds for public housing. With a subsidy that was increased during the last term.
A housing estate in Swidnik (proj.: Stelmach and Partners Architectural Office).
© PFR Real Estate
Susanna: These are things that local government officials know about, and my impression is that they treat it much less politically.
Joanna: It seems to me that local government officials who are currently playing in the central court are saying that there is no money for housing. And at the same time, their colleagues, the mayors and the authorities of smaller cities are implementing such projects. For example, the eco-district project in Chrzanów, which was done by Ola Wasilkowska employed by Ernst & Young with money from the European Investment Bank.
Zuzanna: The local government needs to know where it can get funds from, but the most important thing is that there should be the will to make such investments.
Joanna:In Chrzanów less than two years ago, Robert Maciaszek said what an idea he had, but he had neither money nor competence in the office to implement it. At that time, I sent him contacts to an employee of the EIB, which finances such projects and analyses. Within six months this cooperation was so advanced that the matter moved forward, and now, after less than two years, an architectural design has been presented. It was no secret, from the very beginning it was communicated that Chrzanow was trying on this eco-district. So it begs the question of what other local government officials were doing at the time.
Zuzanna: The excuse is that on the local government footing various beautiful ideas break down with bureaucracy, administration.
Joanna:No. They crash due to lack of political will.
Susanna:There is also talk of other obstacles, as in the case of the Warsaw Social District (WDS), which you also initiated.
Joanna: But before that, Warsaw launched two projects with the EIB: Bazar Różycki, where this housing is an additional element, and the other is to be implemented by the MPRI company in Ursynów on a plot of land on Klobucka Street. I don't know what stage this project is at now.
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Alicia:What is happening with the WDS?
Joanna:Nothing.
Susanna: A scrap of claims, which is what always happens in Warsaw.
Joanna:Which doesn't explain why no one has done an experimental modular housing development there, which could be assembled and dismantled.
Susanna: Especially since the claims are only for a fragment - a rather unfortunate localized cutout. Why does this block the whole thing? After all, you can rework the master plan, or realize one building, an experimental one. Modular demountable temporary assumptions are a controversial solution. Often what was supposed to be temporary turns out to be excessively permanent.
Joanna: But that would be a solution, we could have had for a few, maybe three years now, a well-designed housing development, which, if anything, would be moved to another place.
Zuzanna:And nothing has happened, the topic lies fallow. There is no political will for housing in Warsaw.
Alicia:Does it make sense, then, to create a housing policy, if in the end sleaze prevails?
Joanna:The housing policy is there, it's just not being implemented. Warsaw has its housing policy, which we prepared, and it was adopted in December 2017. In addition, it has a housing program that was ready with comments at the end of the last term of the local government, which was in 2018. It was a concrete program with plots of land written out for 15,000 housing units.
Susanna:One thing is the will declared in official documents, and the other is what is not actually happening.
Joanna:This is not only a problem for Warsaw. New Żerniki in Wrocław has also come to a standstill. Only the TBS building, which was built in the previous term, was handed over in this term. This can't be explained by war or lack of money. If housing policy does not realistically become an election topic, these apartments will not be there.
Alicia:Election topics have a short shelf life.
Joanna: The election cycle is enough time to build some of these apartments. Not to mention the renovation of vacant apartments. I, for one, have a concern that the big cities will only reflex when they start losing residents, including the middle class who pay taxes. Something will only move when the number of people who really can't afford to buy an apartment (and there are more and more of them every year) becomes large enough to be the electorate. And since even Donald Tusk at the PO convention says that housing is a right, not a commodity, that means the topic is there.
Alicja: Thank you for the interview.
