Debt-ridden municipal housing is a problem for municipalities. Deputy Minister: Management is deficient.

• - The payment situation depends, among other things, on the determination of those managing the resources - says Tomasz Lewandowski about the debt in the municipal housing sector.
• In 2023, according to IRMiR, 392.4 thousand municipal apartments were indebted (over 50 percent of the total), and the total debt amounted to PLN 3,851,844.3 thousand.
• Cities run programs to help tenants work off their debts, but in Warsaw, for example, interest in them is declining.

In 2023, the Urban Policy Observatory of the Institute of Urban and Regional Development prepared a report on how cities are faring as landlords and investors in housing. It found, among other things, that rent arrears in the municipal sector have already reached critical levels.

Across the entire sector, 392,400 apartments were indebted (over 50% of the total), with total debt amounting to PLN 3,851,844,300. In 122 cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, no eviction proceedings were conducted at the end of 2020, even though in 53 of them the share of indebted apartments exceeded 50% of the total stock.

Current regulations don't facilitate debt recovery. Tenants are often years behind on their payments, and court and eviction procedures are lengthy. In an attempt to save themselves, many cities introduced debt-recovery programs years ago. Unfortunately, their results vary widely, as Interia Biznes reports.

For example, in Warsaw, tenants' debts total PLN 184 million, and only 123 people agreed to work off their debt last year . Interia Biznes reports, citing officials, that fewer people are willing to work off their debts to the city each year.

A similar program has been operating in Łódź since 2015. According to the local office, in 2024, 230 debtors signed agreements, and the total value of the debt worked off was PLN 759,000. From the program's inception to May 2025, nearly PLN 4.9 million in debt was repaid in this way.

In Poznań, debt totaled nearly PLN 120 million in 2017, reaching PLN 67 million at the end of 2024. In the first half of 2025, it fell by another PLN 2 million to PLN 65 million. In 2017, the Debt Collection and Eviction Department was established at the Municipal Housing Resources Board. The goal was to "teach existing debtors to start making current payments while simultaneously repaying, even if only a small portion, their existing debt."

- The result was an increased number of conversations with tenants, which often led to taking steps other than legal ones in order to reduce the debt - explains Łukasz Kubiak, spokesman for ZKZL, in an interview with Interia Biznes.

He emphasizes that installment agreements are a crucial element in debt reduction. Since 2017, 7,000 have been signed. Debt is also being reduced through the "Housekeeper" program, previously known as the "Caretaker" program, which has been in operation since mid-2018. Debtors could take on tasks such as cleaning common areas and outdoor areas, maintaining green spaces, or clearing snow, and those who repay the debt could be employed by the Housing and Housing Association under an employment contract.

Currently, the program covers approximately 150 people, including city debtors. These individuals clean approximately 250,000 square meters annually, and PLN 3 million in debt has been paid off through the program.

- explains Łukasz Kubiak.

The former CEO of the Poznań-based company, Tomasz Lewandowski, was until recently the deputy minister of development and technology, responsible for housing reform in the government. He is now transferring his responsibilities to a new ministry: Finance and the Economy.

In his opinion, "empathy and the desire to help the weaker cannot mean naivety and tolerating cunning."

As he says in an interview with Interia, if someone has over 100,000 in debt on a municipal apartment, it means they have not paid for it their entire life.

This means that the neighbors were paying for it, so to put it bluntly, this person was stealing from other members of the local government community. The lack of willingness to work it off (except in rare cases) demonstrates how the tenant approaches their responsibilities.

- Tomasz Lewandowski tells Interia Biznes.

As a reminder, in a recent interview with the Local Government Portal, the Deputy Minister also announced, among other things, mandatory income verification for all tenants of municipal apartments, as well as the abolition of automatic inheritance of municipal housing lease agreements. A package of laws containing these solutions will be developed by the new Ministry of Finance and Economy, which will now address housing issues.