How the chronic shortage of municipal housing hits the Polish rental market?

According to estimates, Poland is currently facing a housing shortage of between one and even two million units, while the state-owned emergency housing stock is shrinking year by year. As a result, the burden of implementing social housing policy is falling directly onto private landlords. Faced with an inefficient system, property owners fear lengthy and ineffective legal proceedings. Consequently, they prefer to keep apartments vacant, raise requirements for tenants, or drastically increase rents. An expert warns: without a rapid expansion of municipal housing stock and a realistic reform of the law, the Polish rental market will remain blocked, and tenants themselves will bear the costs of this paralysis.

– The current housing situation is a bottleneck that is paralyzing the entire rental structure. When municipalities lack housing units, the state effectively shifts its social obligations onto private landlords. If the municipality does not provide replacement accommodation, an eviction cannot be carried out — even with a final court judgment. The private landlord, entirely against their will, becomes the last link in the social assistance system. This is not merely a political or local government issue – it is a real factor making rental housing in Poland more expensive and less accessible for all of us – emphasizes Maciej Gołębiewski, real estate investment expert and founder of dobregonajmu.pl.

System Paralysis: Lack of Replacement Housing and Rising Risk

Macroeconomic data and reports from state institutions expose the systemic inefficiency of supported housing. According to Statistics Poland (GUS), by the end of 2024, more than 119,000 households in Poland were waiting for municipal housing. The situation is exacerbated by a dramatic shortage of temporary accommodation, which – according to the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) – is lacking in over 90% of municipalities. This directly blocks legal procedures. Estimates by Bankier.pl from 2023 indicated that the number of suspended evictions in Poland exceeded 55,000. In extreme cases, waiting times for social housing allocation reached a record 22 years.

– Every day I meet landlords terrified by the prospect of a years-long battle for their own property. In practice, an eviction order granting the tenant the right to social housing means waiting from one and a half to three years, and in pessimistic scenarios even seven years, for the municipality to take action. We are simply dealing with a legal fiction. Investors have no choice: they must factor this enormous risk into the rent. As a result, reliable tenants pay for the inefficiency of public offices and the shortage of municipal housing through their monthly bills – explains the expert.

The Vacancy Paradox: Fear Stronger Than the Desire for Profit

The lack of trust in the legal system is reflected in statistics concerning unoccupied housing units. According to the National Population and Housing Census, Poland has nearly 1.8 million vacant apartments, including approximately 207,000 in Warsaw alone. Naturally, some are structurally vacant due to poor technical condition, inheritance disputes, or unfavorable locations, but many are fully habitable.

In 2023, the Commissioner for Human Rights explicitly stated that property owners are reluctant to rent apartments because of the excessively broad and effectively paralyzing statutory protection of tenants’ rights. Landlords’ fears are supported by market experience: studies show that nearly 70% of them have had problems with dishonest tenants, and the average financial loss amounted to almost PLN 9,000. Most tellingly for the condition of the system, as many as 74.4% of affected landlords decided not to pursue their rights in court.

– Statistics concerning vacant apartments in Poland are alarming, but they are not the result of a lack of demand. These are often “fear-driven vacancies.” People are afraid to rent out apartments, especially to families, because they feel that if problems arise, they will be left alone to deal with them. They choose no profit instead of risking the loss of control over their property for years. The dynamic development of the PRS sector – a model in which institutional investors purchase entire buildings in order to rent units to private users – or the growing popularity of professional tenant verification are nothing more than market attempts to buy a safety policy where the state has failed – explains Maciej Gołębiewski.

Social Housing as a Market Shock Absorber: Lessons from Europe

Poland’s share of social housing – including municipal and social units – stands at only 5.4%, placing the country significantly below the OECD average of 7%. Meanwhile, official attempts to bridge this gap have failed – the Mieszkanie Plus program, officially described by NIK as a “failure,” delivered only 3,500 of the planned 100,000 units. Local government efforts look even worse: in 2022, Polish municipalities completed only 629 municipal apartments, the lowest result since 1989.

This sharply contrasts with Western European models, which demonstrate that a strong public sector stabilizes the private market. In Vienna, as many as 60% of residents live in supported housing, resulting in an average commercial rent of just €10.30 per square meter. In the Netherlands, social housing managed by housing corporations accounts for 29% of the housing stock and operates efficiently without direct government subsidies.

– We must stop perceiving municipal housing construction as competition for the private market. In mature markets such as Vienna or the Netherlands, a strong social housing stock acts as a price stabilizer. Every additional percentage point of public housing provides real relief for tenants’ wallets in the commercial market. Once we remove the pressure of the cheapest housing segment from the private sector, the entire system will regain liquidity and a healthy structure – argues the expert.

Evolution Instead of Radicalism: What Does Polish Law Need?

The need for change is urgent, especially since more than 25% of adult Poles currently fall into the so-called “rent gap” – they cannot afford commercial rents, yet their income is too high to qualify for municipal housing. A positive signal is the prospect of increasing the BGK Subsidy Fund from PLN 1 billion to a planned PLN 10 billion by 2030, which may provide municipalities with real tools for construction. At the same time, rapid legal reforms are essential. Among the proposals already on the table are draft bill UD313, which предусматривает income verification for municipal tenants, and a Senate petition proposing accelerated proceedings with a judgment issued within 60 days.

– The debate on legal reform is not about promoting “evictions onto the street,” but about restoring basic justice and predictability. Property owners must be certain that a court judgment will be enforced within months, not decades. Examples from Denmark and France show that it is possible to create a system that protects honest tenants without incapacitating landlords. In Denmark, the entire eviction process takes between 39 and 84 days. France, meanwhile, introduced severe financial penalties – €7,500 fines for so-called squatters simply for refusing to leave someone else’s apartment. Without the courage to reform tenant protection laws and make real investments in emergency housing, we will only deepen the current crisis – concludes Maciej Gołębiewski.