🌊 The Great Polish Housing Miracle

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By Max Frost

If there was one main reason why Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral primary last week, it may have been the cost of housing: The median two-bed apartment in New York City rents for $5,500, the highest rate in the world. Yet it’s not just near Wall Street that homes go for a fortune: From the brownstones of Brooklyn to the cramped flats of London and the row homes of Washington, DC, finding an affordable home has become a daunting challenge.

Yet a very different story has unfolded in Poland, where, since the end of communism in 1989, what some call a “housing miracle” has taken place. While a lack of building has led to surging prices and low ownership rates in many Western cities, Poland has seen a boom in construction, affordability, and homeownership.

So how did Poland, once plagued by severe housing shortages under communism, manage to turn things around? And why do wealthier US and Western European cities still struggle with chronic housing undersupply and exorbitant costs?

To understand how Poland’s housing market ended up functioning so well, we have to look to a time when there were no markets at all. 

When Poland’s communist era ended in 1989, decades of centralized planning had left a huge gap between supply and demand, with Poland having only 284 dwellings per 1,000 people – the lowest such rate in Europe. Under communism, housing was state-controlled: Private homebuilding of multifamily units was virtually outlawed, rents were capped at token levels, and waiting lists for state-built apartments stretched for 15 to 20 years. 

When communism fell in 1989, Poland inherited this severe backlog. Its new democratic government faced a major challenge: How to provide housing to millions of people overnight.

Poland began by privatizing millions of state-owned and cooperative apartments, offering them to their tenants at low cost and quickly creating millions of individual homeowners. Meanwhile, rent controls and subsidies were lifted and the state gave up its monopoly on housing. Practically overnight, Poland developed a housing market.

Editor’s Note

We hope you found today’s article interesting. We’re curious to hear from you: What does housing availability look like where you live? Do you think other cities today can replicate Poland’s success? Send in your replies here.

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