A test of patience

Right now, student dorms only have enough places for at best 4 pct of all students in Poland and for years it’s been well known that the condition of state-run student accommodation is pretty run down. Just to get a place in such a student hall, it’s probably advisable to know someone in the Ministry of Education. In recent years, there have been stories about how young people are deciding not to go to college at all because of this problem – they just can’t afford to rent a room from a private landlord or to commute from their home towns.

I try to relate every topic I’ve broached in this column with something closer to home. And don’t be surprised if I do this again. The Jowita student hall in Poznań is in quite a smart area. Its modern façade lies just next to Rondo Kaponeira and the Bałtyk office building. In spring 2023, Adam Mickiewicz University announced that the building was to be sold (experts had advised back in 2003 that it needed renovations, but nobody back then paid much attention). The students were outraged and protested with a two-month sit-in of the building last winter. They demanded to know not only what the future of Jowita would be but also what was to happen to other student residences that were also in dire need of renovation. Not only were students involved, but also activist organisations concerned with tenant rights who feared the prospect of more public buildings being privatised. At the moment, the fate of the building remains undecided. It could be that the protestors’ demands will be met and the building will remain a student hall; but maybe it’s going to be redeveloped into a block with 200 micro-apartments under the name ‘New Dump’ (if any developer wants to use that name, come talk to me and we can reach some kind of arrangement). The building’s characteristic broken pottery façade still shimmers in the sunlight, but inside its walls there’s no one.

And since we are on the topic of flats, I recently went with some other journalists to visit a new development in a large Polish city. The first resident had already moved in. I heard that the fitting out had been completed at record speed because it had been bought for a school-leaver who was about to start studying at a prestigious local university. “You have to understand, this is a premium client.” To start off your adult life with your own flat is without doubt a privilege, and I’m not going to wax romantic about the peculiar charms of broken panelling or reminisce about the style of the sanitary fittings in my former student residence. After all, that which doesn’t kill us makes us traumatised.

What I remember of my first years in college were that the furnishings were, to say the least, unconventional. I’m convinced that they must have now been taken away, given a title and sold off as a visionary artistic installation. I look back fondly on living in a townhouse divided into two sections connected by a massive hall where I used to play badminton with my friends. Was it cold? Let’s just say it was invigorating and in the Scandinavian style. And since we’re on the subject of temperature, the wooden framed double windows were really great for storing vegetables and dairy products in the space between their two panes – at least from November till April – as the fridge was far too small for five people, all of whom would bring in a ton of food every week. Was this not a ‘multi-purpose interior that interacts with seasons and fosters creativity’? A year later I moved into a block where one of the four rooms was occasionally occupied by a relative of the landlady who ran a beauty salon there. She would never say when she was coming or going and her opening hours were erratic. In other words, ‘the mixed-use design included both accommodation and services – especially the beauty sector.’

I’m in a good mood today, so I won’t go into a rant. The lack of student accommodation is not the fault of gutless developers but of a broken system that the state has so far failed to repair. Then it wouldn’t be so pressing to build so much more private accommodation. We can only hope that students will soon have a much greater range of places to choose from irrespective of their wallets. Otherwise, in a few years’ time universities will only be taking in those who not only have been accepted for courses but have also found themselves somewhere to live.