Why do officials and politicians turn a blind eye to pseudo-hostels?

A few days ago I commented on the case of the hostel in Pszów, where 5 people died in a fire. This so-called hostel is a typical building illegally converted for collective housing. This particular one was supposedly some kind of farm building that housed a poultry slaughterhouse. Someone decided to turn it into a hotel facility. As the country, so the hostels.

I commented on this matter because a few years ago I fought such an illegal hostel on the plot adjacent to my house. The owner of the property rented the property and the house to a company that added a few entrances. Every larger room was used to the maximum and divided into smaller ones. Bunk beds appeared in the rooms. Even the basement was converted into living quarters. During the pandemic, there were 50 people there, and it is a typical Gierek-era cube house where a maximum of 5-7 people live.

pseudo-hostel pathology

For me, it was an obvious matter that this should be eliminated at all costs. Constant fights, alcoholic parties, jumping over the fence, lying drunk half-naked foreigners and Poles under my fence or entering neighboring houses by mistake, harassing the neighbors’ underage daughters, calling prostitutes for a taxi, parking a dozen or so cars on the lawn. All the residents left at around 5 am, starting all their vehicles, slamming doors, making noise - this is not just a nuisance, it is extremely burdensome.

Because in Poland, offices can only collect taxes but are completely uninterested in whether a given business operates legally or not, to fight this, I had to hire a lawyer. He wrote requests for inspections on my behalf. Let me explain right away - despite the fact that the house was not adapted for collective housing, no one ever inspected it. No official or firefighter verified whether the law was being violated, and the building supervision, despite repeated requests, did not deal with the matter. Even despite the lawyer’s actions, because supposedly the introduction of the pandemic state excluded the possibility of inspection.

officials did not conduct an inspection after a death

Fortunately, the owner of this establishment, seeing my persistence (and he has a dozen or so such pseudo-hostels in Łódź), decided to withdraw from this location, probably sensing that at some point the matter could get complicated and an inspection would finally take place, especially since we had an ace up our sleeve… this whole sentimental story has a second bottom. Because a person died in the shower in this hostel, and because the building is not adapted for housing, the police and officials should have opened an investigation. This is what would happen in any civilized country. Did it happen? To my knowledge, there was no investigation, apparently they determined from CCTV analysis that there was no third-party involvement. Since the establishment operated for several more years after this incident, I assume that no official ever bothered to check the relevant permits and approvals after the death. Can it be done? It can!

Well, removing this pathology cost me a lot. A lawyer - quite a considerable expense. I spent a lot of money on building a wall, CCTV security and the arrivals of the security intervention, which repeatedly stood outside my house guarding so that during parties people would not jump over the fence. It may seem strange, but there were really such situations, and the police are not interested in interventions. When I once called with information that a drunk woman was crying on the property, who had probably been beaten by three Poles and had been walking around all day with a crying baby, and we were afraid of another Łódź catastrophe like “children in barrels” (that is, that the child would be tortured to death - again this Łódź), the person on the phone at 112 said that the woman can cry and sees no need for intervention.

Let me hasten to explain that this is not some pathological district in the style of ŁKS Limanka morda nie szklanka. It is a quite nice district next to the Łagiewnicki forest and it was the owner of the house together with the hostel company who made life hell for the surrounding neighbors. Besides, the owner, who runs a dozen or so similar hostels throughout Łódź, is served by one of the best law firms. They are on a lump sum, so I suspect, to the best of my knowledge, they are very effective in ensuring that he can continue to operate.

But why am I writing all this to you? This whole sentimental story that someone was making noise. There are many such stories. However, there are several aspects to this matter. Firstly, the issue of concealing the practice and turning a blind eye to the operation of pseudo-hostels that do not meet any standards is the result of a complete lack of cheap housing. The current costs of construction, taxes, heating are so high that in order to cram people in at reasonable prices, it was decided in Poland to treat them like cattle, allowing such establishments to operate while officially adopting the line that the law is unclear and so on. I was surprised to read an article on Money.pl, where an engineer from the District Chamber of Construction Engineers says:

In the case of opening a shop or a reception house in a single-family house, it is not difficult to show that the building is being used contrary to its intended purpose, but when it comes to renting it out for workers’ quarters, it is not so simple - explains Eng. Andrzej Falkowski, chairman of the legal and regulatory team of the Podlaska District Chamber of Civil Engineers.

Let me explain: the official is making fools of people, because he is trying to explain to us that the lack of action on the part of officials is due to the lack of procedures and loopholes in the law. That is, the fact that the company collects fees from tenants, and if it does not, then the tax office can be sent, but of course we all know that it does. This is easy to determine, as is the fact that random people live there, usually carrying out construction work for one company - as you can see, establishing this is some kind of intellectual feat for a Polish official. But this is the modus operandi of the public sector - a public sector employee wants to solve as few problematic things as possible, and certainly not to cause problems for businessmen who will send lawyers after them. That is why he is passive and hides behind alleged loopholes in the law. My lawyer clearly said that the matter can be settled in 1 to a maximum of 2 years because that is how long it will take to chase the public sector employees to do what they should be doing on their own.

ministry of silly walks and bullshit journalism

There is also another aspect to this matter, namely the issue of bullshit journalism. The journalist writing the article about the problem did not ask such questions at all and did not go in this direction to actually do an analysis of whether the interviewee was telling the truth. What is intellectually beyond the journalist has been extensively developed in the comments. It is clear from them that people understand the problem perfectly. I will quote only a few of the highest-rated comments from the article on Money.pl:

The law is already there, you just need to interpret it correctly. A single-family house, as the name suggests, is inhabited by one family, and more precisely, according to the law, it can be up to two separate apartments, but for a related family. Above 3 units or further 2 units, but not related, the house loses the name of a single-family house and is subject to the law of multi-family houses. And there is a different law, i.e. collective health and safety regulations, acceptance and periodic inspections by the fire brigade, etc.

And maybe in such a case apply the provisions for hotels? Fire protection systems, evacuation routes, SANEPID approval, number of bathrooms per person. No?!? Then a 50,000 fine, for the next 100, etc.

Paradoxically, commentators on the web have more sense than officials and journalists. The Ministry of Development is supposedly “working on a solution” and “looking for a way” to combat this. Even “the option of introducing a surface area limit for built houses” is being considered. Really? The regulations are already there - they just need to be enforced! I think this is a ministry of silly walks…

Typical of our system’s hypocrisy: pretending to be helpless where it would be enough to simply do what officials are supposed to do. But that would require getting up from behind the desk and confronting those who profit from this practice. It is definitely easier to say that we are “walking a thin line” and “looking for a solution”… or maybe the matter has a second bottom and it’s about the lack of housing and the fact that the entire development industry and infrastructure expansion would collapse if it weren’t for the pseudo-hostels made in private homes without any norms or controls? Do you remember that the Audioriver festival had major problems with hotels during the festival due to the expansion of infrastructure in Płock? The workers took all the hotels. The prices of pseudo-hostels skyrocketed. Maybe this is the essence of the problem? Traditionally, I leave you alone with this question…