Social Rental Agency is a program that allows for cheap and safe rental. It has been operating for three years, so far in 12 cities in Poland, but everything indicates that other cities will join it soon. Economists admit that this is a good step in housing policy, but it should be developed on a much larger scale.
Social Rental Agencies are supposed to be a response to the increasingly visible housing crisis. This is a solution for people who cannot afford to rent at market prices or buy an apartment.
– We are talking here about people from a very wide group of the so-called rent gap. These are people who, on the one hand, are too rich to get an apartment from the commune's resources, but too poor to take out a loan and buy their own apartment – says Agnieszka Głusińska from the Habitat for Humanity Poland Foundation.
It is estimated that there are as many as 35 percent of such people. The problem is almost twice as great among single parents or parents with three children.
How does the program work?
– We can improve the availability of apartments not only by building municipal apartments, accepting them into the stock, but we can also reach for apartments from the private market, empty apartments which, taken over by the Social Rental Agency, can serve people who could not count on such apartments until now – he points out Tomasz Lewandowski, Deputy Minister of Development and Technology.
– It seems that this is an element for the future development of housing policy, filling this gap, because in fact the prices of apartments on the secondary or primary market are still relatively high – says prof. Ph.D. Bogusław Półtorak from the Wrocław University of Economics.
Thanks to the program, apartments are to be more accessible and, above all, cheaper than on the commercial market.
– Assuming the market rate, let's say a studio apartment in Poznań is somewhere around PLN 1,500, at the moment we are not paying PLN 1,500 but PLN 1,200 – points out Łukasz Kubiak from the Municipal Board of Local Resources in Poznań.
The agency leases apartments from their owners, both private and city-owned apartments. Owners decide to reduce the market rate in exchange for security and tax exemptions.
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– The city pays money to apartment owners. We make sure that tenants pay the rent, which goes directly to us, this is a big plus for the owners, because in the case of minor renovations that will need to be made, the city will cover them – says Łukasz Kubiak.
The rental price may be even more attractive. Tenants can apply for rent subsidies.
– Every SAN tenant can apply for subsidies. These subsidies are financial from Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego. These subsidies are individual depending on the size of the household. I would say that the larger the family, the higher the subsidies – explains Łukasz Kubiak.
The program is expanding to additional cities
It's an attractive offer, but the problem is that the program currently only works in 12 cities, and the needs are huge.
– (The program – editor's note) is a response to the housing needs of our residents, we have people there who, in difficult life situations, found a place to live very quickly – says Bożena Borowiec, vice-president of Dąbrowa Górnicza.
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All 40 apartments in Poznań have also been rented. – There are about 60-80 people in the SAN queue, so there is a shortage of these apartments, we are still looking for these apartments – says Łukasz Kubiak.
Kraków is also preparing to start this project. The first tenants will move into the new apartments in November.
– We expect that in this first phase there will be about 50 apartments that could be allocated. We still have a survey addressed to apartment owners to contact us, says Dariusz Nowak from the Krakow City Hall.
The biggest challenge, and at the same time offering the most opportunities, is the acquisition by Social Rental Agencies of apartments that are empty. And this is even every 10th apartment in Poland.
– It's even two million. These apartments are not working at this time, SANs have a chance, maybe not all these apartments can be removed from the market, but if it were the additional 500,000 on a national scale, a few thousand on a city scale such as Wrocław or the capital – says Bogusław Półtorak from University of Economics in Wrocław.
Then the problem of the housing crisis could be partially solved. However, the plans assume that Social Rental Agencies will have only two thousand apartments by 2030.
Main photo source: Photocon / Shutterstock