New, updated edition of an excellent reportage
After Poland regained its independence in 1918, it suffered from a huge housing famine. For the whole twenty years this problem was being solved by various kinds of enthusiasts, socialists, people with a mission. It was unsuccessful.
After 1989, Poland was again at the starting point. Cheap flats like it did not exist, it does not exist. Further ideas for solving the housing problem turn out to be worse than the previous ones, and loopholes in the existing system are ruthlessly exploited by banks, developers and tenant cleaners. Many citizens are therefore coping, as they can, by vegetating, cheating and adapting. Almost two million Poles have signed credit agreements. The Mieszkanie Plus project, which was enthusiastically received, also turned out to be a fantasy.
The word “home”, changed by all the cases by the protagonists of this book, is not associated with stability or calm, and most of the stories told here are tragic. To listen to them, Filip Springer found himself living in a cellar, container, garage and small catering on the fifth floor of the building. And he saw how reality can be different from dreams.
This book arouses anger. First to the pre-war elites who did nothing about it. And then to the elites of the Third Republic of Poland, who decided that the free market would take care of the matter. Springer describes the cursed Polish housing problem, looking at the advertisements of small, cellar-like clinics of one thousand six hundred zloty each month, subletory rooms divided by a furniture wall. He reminds us of the history of bankrupt developers, frank loans, tenement house cleaners and the unbelievable cunning that preys on the lack of flats. An excellent report on the negligence of the 25th anniversary, after which the chocolate eagle will no longer be so sweet. Grzegorz Sroczyński, “Gazeta Wyborcza”
Filip Springer (born 1982) - reporter and photographer cooperating with the biggest Polish press titles. Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2010) and the Young Poland programme of the National Cultural Centre (2012). He presented his works at exhibitions in Poznań, Warsaw, Łódź, Gdynia, Lublin and Jelenia Góra. His reporter’s debut is a book by Miedzianka. Historia znikania (The History of Disappearance) - was in the finals of the R. Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage 2011 and was nominated for the Gdynia 2012 Literary Award. He is also a finalist of the Nike 2012 Literary Award and a winner of the third edition of the Ryszard Kapuściński scholarship competition for young journalists. 13 floors is his fourth book. It was published earlier: Badly Born. Reports on the architecture of the People’s Republic of Poland, Wanna with Colonnade. Reportages about Polish space and Zaczyn. About Sophie and Oskar Hansen
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
