Some contradictions of neoliberal housing policy – global mechanisms and Poland

Abstract

Neoliberal housing policy gives surplus flats relative to effective demand, allows empty dwellings as a means of thesaurisation, etc. This policy does not eliminate unwanted unindependent indwelling, evictions, homelessness, etc. Such housing policy causes economically measurable and unmeasurable or little measurable social and environmental costs. The aim of the article is to highlight some of the contradictions and controversies of neoliberal housing policies that constitute such a state of affairs. The contradictions and controversies contemplated refer to the general fiction of the housing market, consisting of the apparent abundance of meeting housing needs, which is detrimental in the long run for the social economy and therefore for the sustainable development of human habitation. The derivative of this issue is the tendency to deteriorate the credibility of housing and population data, which muddy the social effects of housing policy and conceal its drawbackes. Against this background, concrete controversies and paradoxes of housing policy in Poland after 1989 correspond to the contradictions of the neoliberal housing policy of a global realm of Western civilization. Some controversies and paradoxes appearing in Poland are sometimes included in the general mechanism of crisis changes in this area. Such an article also justifies the need to search for ways to repair and transform the development of Western civilization as an opportunity for real social economy in a universal sense. Chances that the use depend on focusing on balancing the development of the inhabited space and the whole space of human habitation by transforming towards a more sustainable development.