ABSTRACT
Co-housing has become very popular in the 2000s in Western Europe and is often associated to an emergent issue of affordable and self-managed housing. But it was not always the case, and in Poland, it is not at all ‘fashionable’. Generations of people born after the war very often lived in a housing cooperative (spółdzielnia mieszkaniowa), and this experience was not the result of a choice, but almost the only way for urban dwellers to get a flat. Generally, people now associate cooperatives to bureaucratic ‘monsters’ and to prefabricated blocks in the outskirt of the city. The stereotype view of cooperative blocks is based on this vision. Housing cooperatives are present everywhere in the country, especially in big cities. They also often occupy the public debate, because in the 1990s and especially in the 2000s, their future was publicly discussed, engaging more than 5 millions of Poles. This article aims to analyze the long-term position of housing cooperatives in the Polish housing system.
