Changes of tenant's law in Poland

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 materials are available about all of this in Polish, if you can
read/understand it:

http://lokatorzy.info.pl/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/opinia-kol-o-noweliz...
http://lokatorzy.info.pl/wiceburmistrz-jerzy-majewski-mija-sie-z-prawda-...
http://lokatorzy.info.pl/interwencja-kol-na-ul-29-listopada/
http://lokatorzy.info.pl/kategoria/nasze-dzialania/