Skill issues

Finding an apartment is needlessly difficult

Finding an apartment is an unforgiving journey unto its own, actually I'd say it's a full-time job in certain areas of the world. So if you already work, study, have a hobby or two, too bad.

I'm talking about students who have to fight through a "competitive market" all while working on projects, studying for exams keeping up with friends and family, staying fit, etc..., I'm talking about families that have to trade the bare-minimum comfort of their children for anything with a roof but with a hefty price tag, I'm talking about working individuals that live paycheck-to-paycheck and endure 40 monotonous work-week hours just so that the certainty of having food on the table and keeping the lights on remains unchallenged. I can only imagine what it would be like to have all of the above situations combined.

If you're a foreigner to a country while having to go through these situations, it adds needless pressure to already needless pressures.

What should take, at most, weeks to find some place to live in with a functional water system actually takes months, maybe years, and in the case of a foreigner, eons. Unless of course, you have the financial means to keep up with the "market rate" (which is determined by a bunch of opportunists wanting to take endless vacations to countries with relaxed rules on abuses).

Let's take Poland for example, as it is the country where I draw my terrible experiences from.

First, when you look at the listings on Polish real estate websites, like Otodom.pl, you'll find that many landlords will opt to add "Polish speakers only" and the "Occasional Lease Agreement only" (which I will get into later). If they don't, they'll tell you later when you do reach out to them. Or hang up on you if you don't speak Polish.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with preferring people who speak Polish in Poland when you're looking to rent out your place. You want to easily communicate? Fine, how about I hire a personal interpreter? (That's a hypothetical, I just so happen to speak the language) But nope, that's not good enough, some without dignity and shame outright will say "We're actually looking to rent out to Europeans only" or "Polish only".

Do you anyone that hosts a restaurant/cafe that has a sign posted to the side of the entrance that reads "Europeans only"? Why don't we take it a step further in the service industry and have it so that we assign riders to Uber/Bolt drivers based on matching ethnicity of both parties. Sound familiar?

Again, I speak the language, not as well as a native does, but this shouldn't be problem, right? When calling these so-called landlords, the first thing they ask is "where are you from", if you ever dare to have so much as a recognizably non-native accent. What the hell does the country name on my passport have to do with the prospect of sleeping under a roof? The question is obviously nothing more than a dogwhistle:

Family Guy Okay/Not Okay

You can easily connect the dots here, there is a clear preference for EU countries, the U.S, Canada, Australia, et tal. that have stronger currencies than Poland and are Western origin. In real terms, there's a clear preference for affluent white people.

Other discriminatory questions that are straight up illegal are also casually asked. "How old are you?" (to gauge your level of income/income stability), "Are you married?/Do you plan on getting married?/Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend?" (having a normal family life and naturally planning to move out later is an unspeakable criminal act), "Can I see your employment contract?" (guess what this violates).

Most landlords in Poland have opted to use the Occasional Lease agreement (Umowa Najmu Okazjonalnego) and abandon the previous Standard Lease Agreement (Umowa Najmu). Why? Let's look at some of the rules unique to each agreement:

Standard Lease agreement

Occasional Lease agreement

From the cheapskate landlord's perspective, it's quite attractive to subject potential tenants to literal serfdom and have greater control over how a tenant can stay. The only possible leeway that the tenant has for early termination is by living under broken conditions that directly harm your health or pose a danger to your life. That's great, I have to allow myself to be in danger, wait for things to go real bad, wait for my personal health & hygiene to degrade as a result of defects, wait for the faucet to faucet to break, etc.. just so that I can leave without a lawsuit. And even then landlords will fight you over what is considered "dangerous", "broken", "defective". "See? The toilet contains 0.00001ml of water, you can still flush!". That, or they'll mysteriously become blind in the face of visibly apparent mold spots across walls.

Another important issue is the requirement to provide a "move-out address" part. To reiterate what this means for the tenant, you have to either know someone already who owns a property for them to "willingly" take you if you need to move out or buy a fake declaration, but if you do, you run the risk of a lawsuit:

If, when concluding an occasional lease agreement, the tenant "buys" from the owner of another property his declaration of consent to the tenant and the persons living with him living in his premises in the event of enforcement of the obligation to vacate the premises without a real possibility of moving, this can be treated at least as misleading the lessor - Piotr Jarzyński, a lawyer from the Jarzyński & Wspólnicy Law Firm, tells Prawo.pl. He emphasizes that landlords should carefully verify the statements of both the tenant and the owner of the premises in which he will be able to live in the event of enforcement of the obligation to vacate the premises. The landlord may also expect the tenant to allow him to talk to the owner of the premises to which he is to move.

"Jednak eksmisja na bruk?" excerpt from Prawo.pl machine translated to English.

This ESSENTIALLY is a very effective way to not rent out to foreigners who don't have friends/family that already live in Poland and own a property. How the hell are you supposed to already know someone with bought property to move in to a rental property in the first place?

A Polish reader who has never set foot beyond their dzielnicy, never mind their inherited homes, might say "well why don't you just use services that give you a notarized copy of a real residential address like Okazjonalny.info?". To that I respond with a question: If I have to rent out a place, with ridiculous inflated prices (where the MINIMUM wage is literally less than AVERAGE cost of rent), on top of that pay an equally ridiculous deposit, and then have to pay 400 PLN for a bogus address that which is probably a legal gray area that landlords have already caught on to, every time I want to move to a new place, then doesn't that suggest a greater problem at play?

The government of course, does nothing to combat this landlord power play nonsense. Instead, it champions it. Talk about being "civilized".

To all landlords leeching off of tenants and calling it "entrepreneurship", providing less than minimal servicing because you think that rent only covers property access, that are hard at work to cut corners and minimize costs and hardly working to get shit fixed, you're a parasite, you have a skill issue, get a job.