TheMarszalkowska Residential District (MDM) is one of Warsaw's more grandiose metropolitan spaces. Although reduced to the role of a parking lot, Constitution Square remains one of the few coherent urban developments in the capital. The Left's local government campaign wants to capitalize on this phenomenon and is proposing the construction of a new MDM in the very center of Warsaw. And in it, two-room apartments for rent for 1,500 zlotys.
Constitution Square
Photo: emptywords | Wikimedia Commons © CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
Located in the southern city center, the social-realist large residential complex with central Constitution Square was built in 1950-1952 according to a design by a team of architects led by Jozef Sigalin (1950-1951) and Stanislaw Jankowski (1951-1952). It consists of buildings with a predominantly residential function, a hotel and commercial premises on the first floors. In 2015, the complex was entered in the register of historical monuments.
flippers tax
Average prices of apartments in Warsaw
© KW Lewica
More than 70 years after the construction of MDM, the problem of the housing gap in Poland is still unresolved. The insufficient number of units, the low share of communal and social housing, the privatization of the urban resource in the 1990s, subsidized loans, and, more recently, speculation and the actions of flippers - all this makes housing unaffordable for an increasing number of people. Referring to the historic project, Magdalena Biejat, together with the Left Committee, with whose backing she is running for mayor of Warsaw, proposes to build a new MDM.
We want to stop the harmful phenomenon of flipping, apartment speculation. Greedy investors take advantage of constantly rising prices, buying apartments only to sell them more expensively in a month or two. This artificially pumps up prices. Speculation in apartments is like speculation in bread, and this practice must be curbed. That's why we want to impose additional tax burdens on certain transactions - selling the same apartment multiple times a year or performing the same transaction multiple times by the same people ," says Magdalena Biejat, a candidate for mayor of Warsaw.
housing development in the center
New MDM
© KW Lewica
Lewica's idea is a housing development of apartments for rent located on Marszalkowska Street, on an empty lot between Królewska and Swietokrzyska Streets. In addition to the apartments themselves, the development would house the offices of the district office, which currently rents out premises on the commercial market. The apartments themselves would also be partially profiled and offered to young families, female teachers, among others. This would be a prescription for Downtown, which is depopulating at an express pace.
We are creating super high quality architecture in a place of exceptional importance to Varsovians at the Paste building and Próżna Street. It's time to "update" and modernize thinking about housing policy move away from thinking about it as social welfare, we repeat once again, housing policy is part of the city's development strategy, " says Zofia Piotrowska, urban planner and candidate for district councilor from KW Lewica lists.
PLN 1500 for two rooms
New MDM
© Martyna Kędrzyńska | KW Lewica
What's more, the apartments offered in the new MDM are to be not only architecturally attractive, but also in terms of price. As Konrad Wiślicz-Węgorowski, a candidate for the City Council, stressed, they will be rental apartments with moderate, regulated rent.
The rent for a two-room apartment will be around PLN 1,500. These will not be apartments for people in a particularly difficult situation. Warsaw Apartments are dedicated to moderately affluent city residents. We plan to allocate some of them to representatives of socially useful professions like teachers or medical personnel," says Konrad Wiślicz-Węgorowski.
can we afford it?
Warsaw apartments, potential project locations
© Mikołaj Gomółka | KW Lewica
So who will build such apartments? And for what? Magdalena Biejat announces the establishment of a special-purpose company called Mieszkania Warszawskie, which, together with TBS, is to build two thousand new apartments a year with the support of the BGK Subsidy Fund. The apartments are to be built on land owned by the City.
The cost to the City of these investments will be about 350 million zlotys a year [the remaining amount is to come from BGK - editor's note]. Warsaw has a budget of 28 billion zlotys and can afford to build apartments - Magdalena Biejat, candidate for mayor of Warsaw.
not only the center
Reconstruction of the Warszawa Zachodnia station, on the left the possible construction area of the Wolska Gate
© PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A.
The new MDM is not the only one of the specific locations indicated by the Left's activists. Outside the inner city, similar investments would be located, among others, in Stare Świders, which would become the local center of Białołęka, in the area of the Stalowa depot or in Nowy Służewiec. There was also a proposal to use the area around the Warszawa Zachodnia station, which is being renovated, where the postulated Wolska Gate could bind the area together urbanistically, also supporting the revitalization of the gasworks.
Wolska Gate
© Martyna Kędrzyńska | KW Lewica
MDM to be amended
What about the existing MDM dominated by a parking and transit function? Also for Constitution Square, activists from Miasto Jest Nasz running in the local elections from the Left list have an idea. They propose removing the parking lot and realizing a green public space there.
