There is much press support to the gentrification of Praga. The liberals croon on and one about just how beautiful everything could be... which is true. The only thing that they forget to tell you about is that this usually goes on at a very high human cost, with the displacement of many local residents.
The building below belongs to the Fire Department.
This project was awarded money for "revitalization" as gentrification is called locally.
Of course, there is a sad story behind it all.
In the middle of July, the Tenants' Defence Committee received an urgent phone call from a tenant in this building. She had arrived home to find that the gate was locked and she was being evicted. People quickly gathered to go help her.
As it turned out, most tenants there had already been kicked out - but there were three left: the woman who called (an employee of the fire department) and a retired woman and her handicapped brother who had lived there practically their whole lives.
Thanks to our intervention, they were not thrown out like that, but the situation proved to be quite tragic.
The woman who was still working for the fire department was constantly being harrassed and mobbed at work to get out of her apartment. In the PRL era, besides public housing, many, many people lived in houses owned by their workplace. Many of these flats were privatized, offered to the tenants. Some people however were not given a chance to buy such flats or could not afford them. They remained tenants. If the building was then sold to somebody else, they were sold along with it.
The tenants were offered "replacement housing" to leave this building. But, as is usually the case with such housing, it is of much worse standard than the housing they already have. But, according to the law, it is supposed to be of the same standard.
The woman who was still working at the fire department was offered quite unattractive replacement housing - including a seven meter place in a basement outside of Warsaw! So she angrily refused to go anywhere.
This is a quite normal and wise choice. What is not normal is that there is such disregard for people, such corruption and callousness throughout the system that people have nowhere to go when their rights are being abused. And she was right - what was being offered to her was not what she was entitled to.
There are a lot of bourgeois people and stupid liberals who hear about people being evicted and think "they deserve it". Such is the antagonist propaganda that most people imagine a class of Praga residents consisting of drunks, thieves and shirkers that "deserve" whatever happens to them. They like to imagine that their fellow bourgeosie are "making order" with the riff-raff. And then they do not want to believe that this kind of stuff happens just to ordinary working people whose only "crime" was to be allocated housing here instead of somewhere else during the PRL period.
The tenants here were not only good tenants, but like in most places, they were better than their landlords. Better because they paid rent all these years but got practically nothing in return. Like many people in Praga, many repairs and even installation of water, bathrooms and kitchens were made by the residents. The owners of the buildings just took money which went to support a bureaucracy.
After years and years, the tenants had made their lives comfortable - or at least bearable - here. They had invested time and money to maintain things. They put in new windows to keep out the cold. As there was no central heating, they often installed different devices, sometimes gas heaters, to keep themselves warm.
One of the women remembers how her family moved in after the war. Warsaw was ravaged by the war and in many places, buildings were barely inhabitable. Families were sent to live in places which were communalized after the war or in buildings owned by workplaces. Often they lived in crowded conditions and had to help repair the parts of the building which were destroyed. This place was home to her - she knew no other place.
Over the years, as family members passed away, people remained in the flats, getting a little more living space. The standard living space in public housing is very small, but many people live in much less than standard. Some people however, whose families have passed away, have a little more room. But this small piece of comfort is very precarious as the owners can take it away at any time. If you are moved, you are theoretically entitled to the same standard - but usually you will get the social minimum or less. Our friend, working for the fire department, would, as a single person, normally qualify for at least 20 meters of space if she were to apply for new public housing. And they were trying to get her to agree to seven meters outside the city.
What is worse is that the fire department, when they tried to evict her, claimed that they had a replacement apartment for her and gave the address. Had she been evicted and gone there, she would have found that the address did not even exist!
With some help from the Committee, the tenants did not end up on the street - but the situation was still quite unjust. They were treated like shit. They also wound up getting worse apartments than they had before. It was indeed a fight so they would even get anything liveable. It was a lot of stress for them, a lot of tears.
And for what?
Money.
For just a few thousand euros, the fire department could have ensured that their employees and former employees at least got comfortable replacement housing.
Renovations are Possible
Another aspect of this story was that, as soon as the people were out of the building, this "spectacular renovation" was done in about three months at a reasonable cost.
The reason this is important to note is that, due to corruption in the city, such normally priced renovations only take place when the building is about to be sold or used for other purposes. As long as their are tenants there, the city claims either that the repairs would take such much money that they cannot afford them, or that it would take such a long time that the tenants would have to be permanently relocated.
We investigated a few places were renovations were supposedly made. (I say supposedly because some are fictious: the city has been charged for them, but the repairs not made.) What we see is that, when there are tenants in the building, funds for repairs are used to make some people rich. We have seen very interesting accounting of expenditures - things so overpriced it is unbelievable. So when the tenants are there, they are overcharging and doing the minimum possible, if anything at all. However, once somebody has a vested interest in actually getting a building up to standard, it can be done very quickly and cost effectively.
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