Łódź

A Polish housing cooperative, the spółdzielnia mieszkaniowa, gives its members one of two rights. The spółdzielcze lokatorskie prawo (a tenant-right: the member occupies the flat but cannot sell it) was the post-war norm. The spółdzielcze własnościowe prawo (an ownership right that can be sold, mortgaged and inherited) took over after 1990, and many members have since converted to full title. That is why statistics file most cooperative households as owners. In practice the cooperative often survives as the manager of the estate rather than its landlord.

Łódź's cooperative era was an industrial one. The Robotnicza Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa „Polesie” (the Polesie workers' housing cooperative, called „Przyszłość” until 1971) built the large-panel district of Retkinia from 1972, on a plan by Krystyna Krygier and Tadeusz Sumień. Villagers were moved off the land to make room for the blocks. Today Retkinia, Karolew and Smulsko together house nearly 71,000 people. Other textile-era cooperatives followed, and RSM Bawełna (bawełna means cotton) grew into one of the largest in the voivodeship.

Those giants have since broken apart. In 1990 RSM Polesie split into smaller cooperatives, among them SM „Botanik”, SM „Piaski” and SM „Zagrodniki”, each running a single estate. RSM Bawełna spun off SM „Zarzew” in 1980 and SM „Czerwony Rynek” in 1981, and it still manages 8,261 flats for 10,244 members. Of those cooperatives, only 2 were building in 2024: SM Budowlanych „Kielnia” and SM Radogoszcz-Wschód. Their new flats sell quickly, and they sell rather than let. The rest administer, maintain and repair estates from the 1970s and 1980s. The two clusters face different problems. The estate managers carry the cost of retrofitting large-panel blocks. The two builders compete with private developers for land and finance. A 2023 Studia BAS paper on the barriers and opportunities facing Polish housing cooperatives sets both in a national frame.

From our library

Spółdzielnie mieszkaniowe na rynku nieruchomości w Polsce w XXI w.: Bariery i szanse rozwoju

Studia BAS on the barriers and opportunities facing Polish housing cooperatives.

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City hall treats cooperatives as neighbours rather than partners. National housing money reaches Łódź through the municipality and its own companies, and the city's programmes are written for its own stock, its tenants and private developers. The OECD's 2025 review of housing reforms in Czechia and Poland examines the same national toolkit from outside, including the place of not-for-profit providers in it.

Mayor Hanna Zdanowska's administration (KO, the Civic Coalition) set out its answer in September 2025. The city council adopted a municipal housing programme for 2025 to 2030 with 1,500 new flats and 2,200 renovated ones. It will modernise 125 municipal buildings and demolish 149 in the worst condition. It also plans to shrink the municipal stock from 37,579 flats to 30,000 by merging, selling and demolishing. In February 2026 the city restated its goal as about 4,500 renovated flats by the end of 2030, alongside more than 1,500 new municipal flats.

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Łódź: radni uchwalili nową strategię mieszkaniową na lata 2025-2030

The 2025-2030 municipal housing programme and the council debate that adopted it.

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New building begins where tenements come down. At Młynarska 20 in Bałuty, a prefabricated five-storey block replaces a demolished tenement with 28 two- and three-room flats. Across that quarter, Okopowa Street and Zgierska Street, the city plans 300 new municipal flats within 5 years.

Most of the money is national. For 2026 the government has set aside a record 6.7 billion zł (about €1.58 billion) for housing, according to the Ministry of Development and Technology (MRiT), which runs housing policy. Of that, 4.02 billion zł flows through the Fundusz Dopłat (the housing subsidy fund) at BGK (Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, the state development bank). It pays for council flats, rental schemes and student housing, with a target of more than 18,000 affordable homes. The Łódzkie voivodeship holds the air-quality rules and the EU regional funds. The city holds land, stock and rents. Eurocities notes that Łódź leans on limited public funding and short-term project grants, and that inflation made its pre-approved budgets obsolete within a year.

Łódź's own instruments target people and plots more than organisations. The city trades municipal plots to developers for middle-income flats. Its STRYCH programme turns underused attics into flats with rent reductions of up to 80%, and a City of Students scheme houses students and recent graduates. Since 2025, Mieszkanie za remont (a flat for renovation) lets a tenant refurbish an empty council flat at their own cost in return for a secure lease below market rent.

On vacancy, the city's reply is demolition first. The deputy mayor, Adam Wieczorek, said in February 2026 that most empty flats sit in buildings long prepared for demolition, and that 38 buildings came down last year, with 150 more to follow. Renovated buildings then carry a rent surcharge of up to 20%. The independent councillor Kosma Nykiel warned that the change would reach tens of thousands of tenants, including families moved out for renovation who now pay more to return. At European level, the 'Right to Housing! Now and Forever' citizens' initiative asks for rules on vacant homes and easier conversion of empty buildings. FEANTSA's study of repurposing vacant spaces into homes makes the case in detail.

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Reclaiming Vacant Spaces to Tackle Housing and Homelessness Crises in Europe

FEANTSA on turning vacant spaces into homes.

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Climate policy reaches Łódź through its stoves. The Łódzkie voivodeship's anti-smog resolution, in force since 2018, required unclassified solid-fuel boilers to go by 1 January 2025. The Mia100 kamienic programme (100 tenements renovated by the city) pairs thermal upgrades with courtyard redevelopment, and the Green Trails project ties new housing to green infrastructure. The stakes rise with the EU's second carbon market. A Bertelsmann Stiftung study of ETS2's effect on European housing finds Polish households among the most exposed to dearer heating. The city's green showcase is the International Horticultural Expo, moved from 2024 to 2029 after the pandemic.

The quarrel in the council chamber is about credibility as much as targets. The administration argues that some buildings are beyond saving and that new flats on their plots serve tenants better.

The opposition doubts the city can deliver even routine repairs to the stock it already has.

Neither side disputes that the council stock must shrink. They differ on whether a city still demolishing can be trusted with building.

Księży Młyn is where Łódź first housed its workers on purpose. Karol Scheibler bought the burnt-out mill estate in 1870. Around his spinning halls he built a school, a fire station, a factory shop and rows of brick family houses, the famuły. The ensemble was declared a national historic monument in 2015. It is the city's original argument that homes, work and services belong within one walk.

Lofty u Scheiblera gave the district's biggest mill a second life. Opal Property Developments turned the spinning hall into 421 lofts of 40 to 200 m², investing 250 million zł. The conversion opened in May 2010 to designs by Gary Wolff with the Łódź practice Marciniak & Witasiak. It showed that a listed mill could hold homes. A University of Łódź study of how the neighbours see the lofts asks the next question: whom the conversion was for.

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Lofty „U Scheiblera” w Łodzi z perspektywy mieszkańców najbliższego otoczenia

A University of Łódź study of how neighbours see the Scheibler mill lofts.

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The Area Revitalisation of the City Centre (Rewitalizacja Obszarowa Centrum Łodzi) is the largest programme of its kind in Poland. Its eight EU co-financed projects renewed about 180 tenements and produced 1,006 new flats, 270 commercial units and 36 artists' studios. It is both the lighthouse and the argument, since tenants moved out during the works now face a surcharge to live in the result.

The Montwiłł-Mirecki estate shows that the city once built well for itself. The magistrate raised it between 1928 and 1931 on a competition-winning plan by Stefan Manasterski and Remigiusz Ostoja-Chodkowski. Its flats had electricity, running water and sewers when few Łódź homes did, and about 5,000 people lived there by 1939. It is still in good repair, which cannot be said of much that was built later.

Retkinia's cooperatives carry the post-war layer forward. SM „Botanik”, SM „Piaski” and SM „Zagrodniki” each run one slice of the estate their predecessor built. Many members now hold saleable or full ownership titles, but blocks, courtyards and maintenance are still run in common. That shared management of whole districts is the part of Łódź's cooperative tradition that still works every day.

Few European cities hold this set of materials: a municipal stock large enough to have empty flats in it, mills that have already been converted once, and cooperatives with half a century of estate management behind them. What Łódź has not yet shown is who will turn them into homes that stay affordable.