Poland"s cooperative and state - enterprise housing : options for privatization

This inefficiency is generally attributed to the institutional arrangements of the housing sector during the communist era. Current policies call for rapid movement toward a market-oriented housing system. After reviewing Poland"s housing problems and the progress of housing reform to date, this paper presents general recommendations and specific strategy options for privatizing the nation"s cooperative and state-enterprise housing stock. The general recommendations, which cut across all housing subsectors, are as follows. (1) Legislation should be enacted to allow families to purchase their housing units in the form of condominiums. (2) A housing allowance program should be established to provided limited assistance only for the poor, through a formula by which subsidy payments decline automatically when household incomes increase. With reference to state-enterprise housing, the report recommends that rent controls be removed in and term leases permitted (with evictions for nonperformance), once a condominium law and housing allowance program are in place. Finally, in the interest of efficient and responsive management, the report suggests the division of larger cooperatives (those over 1,000 units) into smaller condominium units. A final section presents a six-step approach to implementing the suggested strategy options.