The housing revolution is coming. There will be no automatic inheritance of leases.

• The next tranche of housing bills prepared by the Ministry of Development and Technology will soon be added to the government's agenda.
• This includes, among other things, planned regulations restoring perpetual usufruct of land for residential purposes.
• - We also have a project amending the act on the protection of tenants' rights in terms of civilizing the management of municipal housing resources - said Tomasz Lewandowski, deputy head of the Ministry of Development.
• - We will also introduce a certain change aimed at improving the functioning of tenants' income verification - he added.
• In addition, the government will work on draft regulations prohibiting automatic (regardless of the tenant's income) inheritance of municipal housing lease agreements.

At the next session of the Sejm (22-25 July), MPs will vote on the final version of the amendment to the Act on Social Forms of Housing Development .

The proposed changes are intended to significantly increase the supply of affordable rental housing. The regulations, soon to be signed by the president, include allocating approximately PLN 45 billion in public funds to support social and municipal housing by 2030 .

However, as Deputy Minister of Development and Technology Tomasz Lewandowski emphasized on July 17 this year during the Senate session, his ministry has also prepared several other draft laws that will soon be submitted to parliament and which envisage revolutionary changes in the housing market.

He informed that a draft law improving the functioning of housing cooperatives is already ready at the stage of applying for inclusion in the government's work list - along with an assessment of the impact of the regulation.

"Whenever draft regulations concerning these cooperatives were discussed until now, they usually 'grabbed their pockets' and wondered if anyone intended to disband housing cooperatives. Meanwhile, we want to support them," declared the deputy head of the Ministry of Development and Technology during the Senate debate.

He assured that the government's draft amendment to the Act on Housing Cooperatives will support their development.

"We're giving housing cooperatives the opportunity to truly benefit from non-repayable, grant, and debt financing (preferential loans from BGK - ed.). There are approximately 3,500 housing cooperatives in Poland that own land and have the know-how to manage their resources. This represents significant potential," emphasized Tomasz Lewandowski.

He added: - We have a draft law introducing certain rules which - in my deep conviction - will also clear the air around cooperatives a bit, which is very much needed for the credibility of building new apartments under these programs (public support for construction for rent - ed.), - noted the deputy minister.

At the same time, he pointed out that "an apartment must be built on something, namely the land." Therefore, the Ministry of Development and Technology also submitted a land act to the government's agenda, restoring perpetual usufruct for residential construction .

I don't know why the previous term eliminated the possibility of establishing perpetual usufruct for residential purposes. Perpetual usufruct has been known not only from the communist era, but from ancient times... It's currently flourishing in Western European countries. It constitutes a strong property right that allows for building on land that is still owned by the state treasury or local government.

- Lewandowski explained.

He pointed out that in the draft regulations the government proposed introducing a new category of perpetual usufruct - specifically for the purposes of social rental housing.

"The difference will be that we will have a lower initial fee – up to 10% – and a very low annual fee of up to 0.3% of the property's value . Therefore, this annual fee will not increase our rent," he explained.

Another of the prepared amendments includes changes to the Act on Ownership of Premises, including, in particular, those regulating the principles of establishing and functioning of housing communities.

- Together with Senator Joanna Sekuła and her Senate team, as well as with the representative of real estate managers and administrators, we have developed new, interesting solutions that will civilize the functioning of the housing communities sector - informed Tomasz Lewandowski.

We also have a project - also waiting to be included in the government's list of works - amending the act on the protection of tenants' rights in the scope of civilizing the management of municipal housing resources

- revealed the deputy head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Technology.

"I don't want to go into detail, as they always stir up emotions until they're laid out and presented as concrete regulations. We're introducing a change there, aimed at improving the functioning of tenant income verification . We're expanding the possibility of such verification not only to contracts concluded after 2019, but to all contracts," Lewandowski said.

He also confirmed the statutory introduction of a "new, fair method of making rent adjustments." "The current method is truly unfair," he emphasized.

He gave an example: "If someone in the capital city of Warsaw – by renting a municipal apartment – exceeds the income threshold that determines entry into the municipal housing system, their rent will be raised almost automatically – for example, for a 40-square-meter apartment, to approximately PLN 3,000," said the Deputy Minister of Development and Technology.

He emphasized that automatic "zloty for zloty" income verification will not be introduced. "The idea is to implement certain income limits at the national level, higher than those set by local governments," he explained.

"Furthermore, we are introducing a ban on automatic inheritance of lease agreements . In short, you won't automatically enter into a lease agreement, regardless of your income," emphasized Tomasz Lewandowski.

Currently, you can earn up to 100,000 złoty a month, but if your parents owned a council flat and you can prove you lived with them before their death, you automatically qualify for the lease. We think this is simply unfair.

- noted the Deputy Minister of Development and Technology.

He added that local governments should have the right to verify the income of people who, among other things, would like to inherit a municipal housing lease from their parents, including checking "whether this person has, for example, another property in a given city."

"We're pouring a lot of money into social and municipal housing. Therefore, I believe that the public, society, has the right to expect this system to operate not only efficiently but also on fair terms, " argued Deputy Minister Tomasz Lewandowski.

He emphasized that one of the goals of the planned changes is to prevent situations in which "too rich" people take advantage of the cheap housing rental system, which is addressed to less affluent citizens.