On August 18th, tenants organizations picketed at the Polish parliament against the possible reintroduction of eviction without any rights to replacement housing. Currently, people can be evicted not to replacement (social) housing, but to temporary housing as well. This temporary housing has no legal definition, which means that families are being sent to overcrowded homeless shelters which meet no standards at all. The Constitutional Tribunal has condemned this as being a violation of rights and ordered the government to adopt an appropriate standard and definition of temporary housing by this fall. However, it has failed to do so and, the absurd consequence of this is that the politicians are interpreting the lack of any binding definition of temporary housing to mean that they have no obligations at all.
All the political parties, which are rushing through dozens of amendments before the upcoming elections, have decided to ignore this, since, in reality, they all want to avoid the obligation to find housing for evicted people and probably all find this a convenient way to do this.
ZSP is considering different actions in response to this matter. We have already declared that we could help people squat people, but probably an action at the Parliament is long overdue!
