Implementation Risk Factors of Collaborative Housing in Poland: The Case of ‘Nowe Żerniki’ in Wrocław
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
- (1)
- Observability feature: In your opinion, are collaborative housing initiatives popular among the members of the social system, such as: neighbours, local community, local authorities, media?
- (2)
- Complexity feature: How do you assess the understanding of collaborative housing? In your opinion, do the members of the social system understand the principles and design of such projects? What elements constitute the biggest problem in understanding this type of undertakings and the lack of willingness to join them?
- (3)
- Compatibility feature: What are the expectations of future residents towards the planned investment? Is the implementation of the project in line with the expectations? Do future residents have an influence on the shape of the given investment, and at what stage?
- (4)
- Trialability feature: Are you guided by other similar collaborative housing initiatives in supporting this type of venture? In your opinion, are pilot programs important in popularising this type of initiative? Do such ventures require institutional support?
- (5)
- Relative advantage feature: Why do you think it is worth choosing this form of housing? How is it better than other forms? What advantages and disadvantages do you see for the operation of a cohousing initiative in times of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?
3. Results
3.1. Public Awareness of Collaborative Housing
The deputy mayor of the city was here and she said: “Indeed, an interesting investment, but what will the city gain from it?” The deputy mayor of a large city does not understand that the city, the local government, the authorities have this servant role to the society. And the question is, what will the city gain from it—well, its inhabitants will have apartments.
Perpetual usufruct was abolished, which was very helpful and prevented any future financialisation of these units. And the fact that we have terribly little independence of cities, where officials are afraid to resort to such innovations, so as not to be accused of some mismanagement. Someone might challenge this.
Our government abolished perpetual usufruct two years ago, and such a preference cannot be applied to collaborative housing anymore. Therefore, on the one hand, various regulations are created to support and encourage such housing, and on the other hand, tools that can realistically help in the formation of collaborative housing are taken away.
When we were looking for funds to make this building, bank clerks were astonished and the answer was: “Sir, there are twelve people and I have only three boxes to enter the names”.
When we carried out the first investment, I understood that it is impossible to get such a loan for collaborative housing, as it is not a well-known economic phenomenon or an economic event, and you cannot go to a large network bank, because large network banks, have to prepare a financial product, which is, for example, a mortgage loan for collaborative housing, and this preparation process was done, so to speak, before it enters the cashier, i.e., 3, 4, 5 years earlier. They have their own structures: 100,000 meetings, analyses, lawyers, research somewhere.
It seems to me that it is still a matter of the lack of this law, [being the reason why] banks have no basis to grant loans, because they do not know the purpose.
I then started a conversation with a cooperative bank, because these are small structures. There is a cash desk on the ground floor, and the president is already on the floor above. Of course, it’s not that easy to get to him, but the chance of getting to the president of a cooperative bank is a million times greater than [the chance of] getting to, for example, the president of PKO Bank Polski.
We got financing from a cooperative bank, a small one, in one of the poviat towns near Wrocław, where people were very open and they invited me and a friend to a meeting of the three-person board, during which we talked about the project in detail. They showed great curiosity and decided to finance this investment with a mortgage.
3.2. Ability to Use and Adapt Collaborative Housing
It was at the stage of joint planning. My wife is an interior designer and she said that a given colour… Well, instead of brown, she said that grey and white would be prettier, more up-to-date. She visualised the building, gates, everything, and everyone liked it, so it was unanimous.
As this process continued, more children were born, people were promoted at work, etc. These apartments grew a lot during the design work. We started with approximately seventy-square-meter apartments, and ended up on average at one hundred meters. We fulfilled many of our dreams with this design.
Common spaces, both inside and outside the building, seem to be tailored to this group. (…) A collaborative group takes part in the design process. And the produced apartments meet the needs of each member of the group.
Experimentation is not about creating theoretical things on paper, because then they are not subject to any verification; there is simply no feedback from the residents or users. And in order to check such things, to build them, and then maybe to implement them on a larger scale, to show the so-called good practice or an example which can open [people’s] eyes, we have to build it.
3.3. Cost-Effectiveness of Collaborative Housing
We have a large garden where we have a common trampoline, for example. It is an expense of PLN 1500, and if five families chip in, then it’s three hundred zlotys each, which is affordable. We have a room on the ground floor, which is called a common room, but it hasn’t been finished yet due to lack of funds. We have storage rooms, one on each floor, shared by two families. We don’t have any problems with that either—we divide and share the shelves among each other. Nothing has gone missing.
Our child calls each of our neighbour’s ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle’. If you need to run some errands, and you don’t have anyone to leave your child with, someone will always help you, take your child for an hour or two and the child does not feel embarrassed. So, this is such a nice team of people. It is such a small community that it is just perfectly integrated.
Certainly, it is also safer, because they also know the circle of friends … I noticed that there is absolutely no problem with any thefts, etc., but in this collaborative housing everyone knows one another. Not only that, they know their neighbours’ children’s friends, so when someone shows up and is not from this circle, they automatically ask: “What are you doing here?”
There is a simple fact that proves it, namely that there suddenly appeared apartments for sale there, probably two apartments. It is not a lot, but still… So, the people who started the collaboration there want to get rid of these apartments now.
Some neighbours were in quarantine, so other people helped them with their shopping. Also, for example, access to the garden, (…) especially since communication was quite free—you could say, for example, you can go out then and there, we’ll go out at other times, so the kids won’t see each other there, and in the meantime, it will fade away a bit. This is for quarantine. On the other hand, during the whole spring, when there weren’t many cases of the disease, but the fear was very high, (…) we could get along much better with our friends, when it comes to the rules of meeting [and] spending time together.
3.4. Pain Points and Utility Spaces of the Collaborative Housing
4. Discussion
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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Category | Name | Identity Characteristics | Date |
---|---|---|---|
Leader of ‘Nowe Żerniki’ | Leader 1 | Architectural Bureau in Wrocław | December 2020 |
Residents | Resident 1 | Resident of ‘Kooperatywa Mieszkaniowa Nowe Żerniki’ in Wrocław | December 2020 |
Key informants | Researcher and architect | Silesian University of Technology (Gliwice) | December 2020 |
NGO’s informant | Habitat for Humanity (Warszawa) | December 2020 | |
Leader 2 | Leader of ‘Pomorze’ (Gdynia) | December 2020 | |
Resident 2 | Resident of ‘Pomorze’ (Gdynia) | December 2020 |
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Lis, P.; Rataj, Z.; Suszyńska, K. Implementation Risk Factors of Collaborative Housing in Poland: The Case of ‘Nowe Żerniki’ in Wrocław. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022, 15, 101. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15030101
Lis P, Rataj Z, Suszyńska K. Implementation Risk Factors of Collaborative Housing in Poland: The Case of ‘Nowe Żerniki’ in Wrocław. Journal of Risk and Financial Management. 2022; 15(3):101. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15030101
Chicago/Turabian StyleLis, Piotr, Zuzanna Rataj, and Katarzyna Suszyńska. 2022. "Implementation Risk Factors of Collaborative Housing in Poland: The Case of ‘Nowe Żerniki’ in Wrocław" Journal of Risk and Financial Management 15, no. 3: 101. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15030101