Potential of Housing Private Finance Initiative Implementation in Polish Circumstances

Housing private finance initiative (PFI) schemes are used for cooperation of local authorities with private partners to build, improve, manage and maintain social housing stock in UK. They can be seen as competitive solution for privatization of public stock. These schemes should enable a transfer of risk from public sector to the private sector and give good value for money. After some years of British experience with housing PFI there is possible to evaluate results and analyse where there are some bottlenecks. The author would like to outline British experience and consider the possibility of transferring housing PFI into Polish conditions. In Poland the picture of housing structure is very patchy: after waves of privatization of public housing stock the current housing structure is very blurry, mostly in big cities. Very high bonuses for tenants – buyers created the mixture of owners: local governments and individuals (due to different levels of income, some of them have problems with housing maintenance). Their aims and level of interest and understanding of housing technical and functional problems are very various. The very important housing supply side actor in socialist time - housing cooperatives are mostly inactive, focused only on survival, currently. Thinking about housing as a very important factor for national economy and social life, there is an important question of new solutions implementation in these circumstances, remembering also about great needs in area of regeneration confronted with cuts in public spending.