Tight, tighter, Polish apartment. What to do to solve this problem?

Each dwelling should provide certain standards that allow residents to function freely and maintain an appropriate level of privacy and independence. So how does Eurostat define these standards? A dwelling should include:

• common room (living room) per household

• a room (bedroom) for a couple in a household

• a room (bedroom) for each person (single) aged 18 or over.

When is an apartment overcrowded?

This means that both a couple and a single person need at least a two-room apartment. As the family grows, additional rooms are needed for younger household members.

• a room (bedroom) for siblings of the same sex aged 12 to 17

• a room (bedroom) for any person between the ages of 12 and 17 who is not included in the previous category (is of a different gender)

• room (bedroom) for two children under 12 years of age (regardless of their gender).

What do the standards set by Eurostat mean in practice?

– According to the presented Eurostat guidelines, a family with two children aged 18 and 13, regardless of the children’s gender, needs an apartment consisting of three rooms and a living room – interprets Extradom.pl expert, Wojciech Rynkowski.

He adds that a family with two children aged 11 and 9 will initially need two rooms plus a living room, regardless of the children’s gender. – However, if it’s a girl and a boy, then after one of them turns 12, according to the cited guidelines, another room would be needed to provide both with the necessary privacy. After they turn 17, each child should have their own room, regardless of the gender and age of the other family members – notes the expert from Extradom.pl.

Interestingly, according to this definition, every studio apartment is overcrowded because it has only one living room – the living room, which also serves as a bedroom.

– The problem is that our apartments have difficulty meeting these assumptions. Three rooms plus a living room is already a large apartment, almost from the premium segment. To see this, just count the square footage. Living room, kitchen, three rooms, bathroom, toilet and hallway total about 70-80 meters. In the largest cities, buying such an apartment, even on the secondary market, means an expense from seven hundred thousand to one million zlotys – adds Rynkowski from Extradom.pl.

Couples with one child are in a slightly better situation. Here, 60 m is enough.². It is therefore hardly surprising that the 2+1 family is becoming the dominant model in our country, although in most cases purchasing an apartment means getting into debt with the bank for many years.

In Poland, old and small apartments predominate

43% of residential buildings in Poland date back to 1945-1989, and the standard of their construction and finishing often does not meet today’s needs and aspirations.

– Apartments built in the mid-20th century were usually small, with a dark, often “blind” kitchen. After the war, speed was the most important thing – the size of the apartments and comfort were secondary. For example, M2 is a room with a kitchen, i.e. a studio apartment, in the legendary M3 often lived large families, and according to the new standards, such an apartment is suitable for a couple at most. Today, there are 1.1 rooms per average Pole, while the average for the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) is 1.8!– says the expert from Extradom.pl.

The free market alone will not solve the problem of overcrowding in premises

Currently, Poland lacks 2 to 3 million apartments. At the current rate of construction of houses and apartments, this means at least a decade of prosperity for the construction sector.

I am convinced that the free market alone will not solve the problem of overcrowding in apartments. It is necessary to change the way authorities and residents of large cities think and act. Due to the relatively high commissions of developers, an apartment automatically has one less room than a house that can be built for the same funds.

– A significant role in solving the problem of overcrowded apartments falls to local and self-government authorities at various levels. Because it should be their task to designate areas for cooperative and single-family housing development. An excellent opportunity for this is the need to adopt general plans for municipalities by the end of next year, resulting from the Spatial Planning and Development Act –summarizes Wojciech Rynkowski from Extradom.pl.

Similarly, legislators planning loan subsidy programs, such as the long-announced #naStart housing program, should establish the terms of their use in such a way that they promote grassroots initiatives by individual and cooperative investors. Because it is individual investors who guarantee that every złoty entrusted to them as subsidies, coming from our taxes, will be used to the maximum, and will not end up in the profit column of one of the many development companies.