“0% chance of getting a loan. Enough of this.” On Saturday they will protest against 0% credit

“Good news: there is a round 0 PLN in the budget for 0% credit. Worse news: we are about to decide the fate of the reserve covering 1.6 billion of this amount,” the Minister of Funds and Regional Policy wrote yesterday on the X website.

Pełczyńska-Nałęcz: “0 percent credit” is bad public policy

She had previously criticized the loan subsidy program. After her, other ministries and the National Bank of Poland joined the criticism.

Today she continued the topic on RMF FM. – “0 percent credit” is a bad public policy because it leads to an increase in housing prices, the PiS version of this program has already led to this by a dozen or so percent (…). As a result, other people who buy without this assistance have to pay more, and those who buy with assistance have to take out a loan for more. So, in effect, they do not earn anything from it. Who earns? Banks that give bigger loans and developers who increase housing prices – said the minister.

Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz indicated that the budget will allocate over PLN 4 billion for housing, including PLN 1.6 billion for social housing.

– I believe that housing is an important development area. Social housing means high-quality houses and high-quality apartments throughout Poland, not only in large metropolises. (These apartments are built) in local government companies, i.e. with a high degree of decision-making power of local governments. This pays off in the long run, because loans and state support are returned to these local government companies in the form of rent – said the minister.

Activists to protest against loan subsidies

On Saturday, several organizations announced a protest in front of the Ministry of Development and Technology, which is imposing the program. “The snail’s pace of work on the bill, the delay in its further processing, as well as the withdrawal of support from some politicians for it, shows that pressure from society is bringing results! All the more reason to keep up the pressure – although some politicians have nominally withdrawn support for the bill, there are buyers of apartments in every party, who definitely benefit from the increase in property prices! We cannot let our guard down and we will not stop resisting!” – it was written in the invitation to the protest on social media.

They argue that the “Start Credit” will translate into an increase in housing prices and rental prices. “The very next day after the bill was announced, a drastic increase in real estate prices was noticed – even up to 16 percent!”

“On August 31, as a coalition of grassroots organizations, we will express our opposition to the elites deliberately fueling the housing crisis and we will demand that not PLN 10 billion, not PLN 20 billion, but PLN 21.5 billion (initially planned from the state budget for the program) be allocated to expanding the public housing stock!” More information here.