English
About the Tenants Defense Committee
The Tenants Defense Committee is a grassroots, self-organized and self-funding tenants organization. It was founded in April 2009, following drastic rent increases in public housing in Warsaw, ranging from 200-300 percent. Since then, it has organized many actions in defense of tenants, including social and political protests, interventions at meetings of political bodies, conferences, public assemblies, eviction blockades, occupations of administrative buildings, meetings on public housing and so on. It includes many members and also has helped some tenants to organize associations in their buildings and blocks. The Committee members help other tenants to take action and resolve their problems, based on the ideas of solidarity and mutual aid. Although it is most active in Warsaw, it operates in other cities around Poland as well. The Committee’s doors are open twice a week in Warsaw and provide support and advice for up to 200 families a month.
Among the postulates of the Committee are:
– An end to the anti-social housing policies that include privatizing and neglecting municipal housing and everybody violations of tenants right, both moral and resulting from the law.
– That more public housing needs to be built and that there needs to be adequate budgeting for this. We do not agree with the spending priorities of the government, which cuts back in areas related to the most basic human needs. Housing needs to be treated like a right, not a commodity.
– That the maximum income criteria allowing people to qualify for public housing is far too low and does not cover the working poor or have any relation to costs on the commercial market.
– That the city of Warsaw stop privatizing buildings and handing over tenants to new owners/ administrators along with the buildings, without being given any replacement housing. The “return” of inhabited property, supposedly to pre-war owners, is in fact often the privatization of property to speculators who have bought claims or manipulated papers. There is no justice in this process and only hurts the tenants, who have contracts for public housing, but are “transferred” to the private sector, without retaining their rights and subject to rent increases, eviction, etc.
– That steps are taken to ensure tenants regain their legal rights when they have paid off debts, instead of cancelling them, saying they are illegal occupants and keeping them there paying contractual penalties (that is, higher rents).
– That public housing come under direct public control. In the framework of the existing system, this includes public control of the housing budget, the criteria for giving public housing, etc. By public control, we do not mean elected representatives who are not directly accountable, but we mean grassroots control by the tenants and neighbours themselves.
More information on our positions or actions can be found in the English section of the page. They have also been described on various other portals, which you may find by searching.
Contact: obronalokatorow@gmail.com
