**3. Changes concerning cooperative housing**

Until the 1990s, housing cooperatives played a dominant role in meeting housing needs in Poland. They functioned on the basis of the Act of September 16, 1982, Cooperative Law (Journal of Laws No. 30, item 210). It was not until December 15, 2000 that the act on housing cooperatives was passed (Journal of Laws 2001, No. 4, item 27), the aim of which was to create separate legal rules

for the functioning of housing cooperatives, providing cooperatives with greater control of the cooperative's management.

The main goal of the operation of housing cooperatives is to satisfy the housing needs of members of the cooperative and their families. Setting up a cooperative is simple - the minimum requirement is ten founders. A housing cooperative is a legal person, and within it there is a general meeting of members of the cooperative as the highest body, as well as the supervisory board and management board that conducts the day-to-day affairs of the cooperative. The members of the cooperative acting jointly form the general meeting of cooperative members, which must be convened at least once a year. The equality of its members is the principle of the cooperative.

Currently, Polish regulations distinguish two types of rights to cooperative premises that may be granted to members of a cooperative: cooperative tenant rights to a dwelling and cooperative ownership right to a dwelling [10]. Previous regulations also concerned the right to a single-family house in a housing cooperative. The statutes of each cooperative indicate what types of rights the cooperative offers to its members. Each of these rights arises under an agreement concluded by the cooperative with its member. Membership in a housing cooperative is currently granted by law to everyone who is entitled to use the cooperative rights to the premises.

A co-operative tenant right to a dwelling is a right similar to tenancy. A contract specifies the amount of the housing contribution to be made by a member of the cooperative. Only one person may be entitled to it, with the exception of spouses. The cooperative remains the owner of the flat, and the tenant is entitled to use the premises and is obliged to pay the fees. This right is not transferable and not enforceable. In the event of the tenant's death, this right expires, in some cases it is possible for a relative (spouse, children) to enter into the right.

The cooperative ownership right to the premises is included in the category of limited property rights. This right is similar in content to ownership, although the housing cooperative remains the owner of the flat. It may belong to several people. This right is transferable and hereditary, and can also be enforced. A land and mortgage register may be established for such premises, and it may be the subject of collateral in the event of taking out a mortgage. Housing cooperatives are required to keep a register of premises for which a land and mortgage register has been established. Most of the cooperative flats are still operating in the legal form of the cooperative ownership right to the premises, despite the fact that since 1997 its creation has no longer been possible.

The cooperative ownership right to a dwelling was a surrogate for the ownership of a dwelling at a time when the provisions of Polish law did not provide for the legal structure of separate ownership of premises in multi-family buildings. Currently, the legislator considers the cooperative ownership right to the premises to be a redundant form in view of the most powerful form of holding the premises, which is the ownership of the premises. At the same time, the legislator does not interfere with existing rights, and does not force cooperative members to transform them into ownership, but provides such a possibility. Pursuant to the provisions of the Act on Housing Cooperatives, at the request of the entitled person, the housing cooperative is obliged to separate the premises and sell the right to ownership. A member of the cooperative is obliged to pay all fees related to the maintenance of such flat, as well as to reimburse the costs of building the flat, if they have not been covered yet. In addition, the housing cooperative is not allowed to charge any fees for the conversion of rights to the premises. In this way, a housing community may be established in a building previously managed by a housing cooperative, and a departure from the cooperative management regime to the rules of the Act on the

#### *Housing Law in Poland—From the Cooperative Model to Flat Ownership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98644*

Ownership of Premises may occur. The trend is noticeable of the loss of management over some buildings by housing cooperatives. This is owing to the separation of the ownership of the premises in them and the decision to entrust management to an entity other than a housing cooperative. Thus, in the resources of housing cooperatives there may be separate premises, which have been created either as a result of the transformation of cooperative rights to premises, or as a result of the construction activity of the housing cooperative after 1997, i.e. when the possibility of creating cooperative ownership rights was abolished.

The number of cooperative flats made available for use in Poland is gradually decreasing. In 2000 there were 24,400 of them, and in 2010 only 5,025 [11]. According to the data as of December 31, 2018, there were 2,030,000 cooperative flats in total (out of a total of 14,615,000 flats in Poland) [12], which means that the number of cooperative flats is still very large. Large housing cooperatives operate in many Polish cities, managing housing estates built in the 1970s and 1980s. Currently, they focus on maintaining the good condition of buildings that require renovation, so their activities are limited to management only. In addition to large cooperatives, there are also small ones that have one or several buildings in their resources. Housing cooperatives in Poland may still carry out construction investments, and the premises may be handed over for use either on the basis of a cooperative tenant's right to a dwelling, or sold as a separate ownership of the premises. Currently, however, the activity of housing cooperatives in the area of erecting residential buildings is small.
