Habitat World Online

Deteriorating apartment buildings — and underlying ownership questions — create housing difficulties in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

A campaign works to keep low-income families from falling through the cracks

By Barbora Cernusakova and Shala Carlson

Dorota and Pawel Wojcik and their two children live in a very tiny communal fl at in a municipality-owned building in Warsaw. Pawel works as a policeman; Dorota is a part-time school teacher. But their hard-earned income is too small — and Warsaw housing prices are too high — for them to buy or even rent a larger place for their family.

Last year, their situation tightened even more. The old owner of the land on which the multi-family housing unit sits turned up to claim his right to the property, saying he intends to take it over. As a consequence, the municipality froze any investment in repair and renovation, even though the building is in bad condition. A lawsuit over ownership of the land was filed, and the stability and living conditions of the 40 families occupying the communal flats have been imperiled.

The threat of eviction that the Wojciks now face is a consequence of what is known across Central and Eastern Europe as the law of restitution, an ill-suited instrument to provide justice to homeowners whose houses were “nationalized” by communist governments. In Poland, for example, in the 1990s, the government adopted restitution laws without taking measures to protect sitting tenants — such as paying the original owner the value of the property and keeping the houses in question public or providing housing alternatives to the affected inhabitants. In this instance, secure tenure is being threatened by actual policy decisions.

“This has had a larger impact than any natural disaster on housing,” says Don Haszczyn, Habitat for Humanity International’s area vice president for Europe and Central Asia. “Large-scale privatization and restitution programs have left some 7 million people — many of whom are elderly — facing unaffordable rent increases or even eviction.

“We believe that governments need to protect the security of everyone’s tenure and, in restitution cases, provide at least an adequate and affordable alternative,” says Haszczyn. “‘Home’ for most of us is central to our well-being as families and people, and housing policy should be a central aspect of government policy — both enabling and specifically protecting the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our societies.”

In a poor region in southeastern Poland, another source of housing instability can be seen. Basia Fijalkowska lives with her warehouseman husband and their two children in a house that they share with two other families. They have no running water, and toilet facilities are outside of the house. Last year, the municipality of Krasnystaw decided to demolish the house due to unmet safety requirements. But the government cannot provide the Fijalkowska family and their fellow residents with a housing alternative; the same expensive construction market that keeps families from being able to afford to build their own homes prevents all but the richest municipalities from building additional rental housing. The situation illustrates the hard fact that local municipalities inheriting the immense housing needs of their populace — and an increasingly deteriorating housing stock — often lack the resources, technical skills and policy to address the problems at hand.

In this atmosphere of extreme and immediate need, Habitat for Humanity Poland has joined forces with 16 other nongovernmental organizations to start a social campaign against poverty housing in Poland called “Roofs Over Heads.” The campaign aims to increase awareness of the inadequate living conditions that affect as many as 6.5 million Poles and to open a public dialogue. The ultimate goal is the adoption of a national housing program that would include solutions for low-income families unable to afford houses through conventional means.

Habitat Poland began the interagency cooperation that led up to “Roofs Over Heads” in 2005. “We established a coalition to address effectively the vast range of poverty housing,” says campaign coordinator Dorota Binkiewicz. “With time, the group of nongovernmental organizations was joined by experts. Discussions and meetings emphasized the need to work out and implement systemic solutions. Housing policy does not exist; it must be created.”

In the meantime, as Habitat Poland works to affect policy, the organization also works to affect the lives of families like the Fijalkowskas — Basia has successfully applied for a microloan available to grown-up orphans through Habitat and has bought a small house that she and her family are renovating.