The Polish ministry of economy is sponsoring changes in the so-called law for protection of tenants.
Currently, a private or state owner of a house has to provide replacement housing when evicting tenants. Very often the replacement is very shabby and the state bureaucrats don't respect this regulation anyway by refusing housing on dubious grounds. For example, in one case in a district of Warsaw, the local administration told tenants of a house that is about to collapse that they will not provide them replacement housing, because "they can live with their parents". This is a middle-aged family with 2 kids.
Apparently the regulations that are not respected anyway were too annoying for the owners and public administration lobby.
The proposed law extends the possibilities to terminate rent without giving a reason (even for paying tenants) without the need to provide replacement housing. It's the so-called "eviction to the street" which is forbidden by Polish constitution. Also, the new proposal removes restrictions on raising rent (until now, rent can be raised only every 6 months).
Very often, the public administration uses pretexts of "safety" to conduct their business. The Committee of Defence of Tenants (Komitet Obrony Lokatorow) which ZSP Warsaw is part of, now deals with the case of a social housing project that the city wants to convert into a hotel complex for Euro 2012. KOL has stopped one attampt in December to turn off gas to 3 buildings (107 families) on the pretext that it is "unsafe". Due to the fact that the inspection of gas and city experts was caught on tape, they didn't dare to break the law in a flagrant way and fixed the problems with pipes instead of cutting gas off completely. On monday, they will again try to do it again - citing non-existing regulation (they claim a kitchen must have 20 cubic meters in order to have gas. In reality, the regulations say 8 cubic meters).
The city's plan is to artificially lower the standard of the housing, evict poor families under the pretext of "their safety", sell cheaply the buildings to their friends, then fix everything and resell with a huge profit after converting the place into hotels or bourgeois apartments.
Some additional materials are available about all of this in Polish, if you can
read/understand it on www.lokatorzy.info.pl
Sunday, 3 January 2010
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A landlord may bring an action to evict a tenant who is considered disorderly because his conduct is disturbing to the peace and quiet of other tenants. When the conduct consists of noise, it must be repetitious and excessive. In other words, it must be disorderly to a person of “normal” sensitivities. In order to evict on these grounds, the landlord must first issue a notice to cease, which is a written statement to the tenants ordering them to cease the disorderly conduct. If the disorderly conduct continues after the notice to cease, the landlord then issues a notice to quit, which is a written document served upon the tenants indicating that the landlord is terminating the tenancy as of a particular date. In the case of a disorderly tenant, the landlord must wait at least three days after the service of the notice to quit before an eviction action can be brought. Visit Tenant Evict Squatters for more information.
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