Expert: The demand for accommodation for immigrants will grow

1.128 million foreigners registered with ZUS work in Poland – according to a survey conducted by EWL Group, RentLito and the Eastern Europe Study Center of the University of Warsaw “Foreign worker. Accommodation in Poland. This group includes 759 thousand. people are citizens of Ukraine, and 129 thousand – Belarus. These numbers are constantly growing. Only in 2023, the number of foreigners in the ZUS system increased by nearly 64.5 thousand. This means an increase of 6.1%. compared to 2022. Specialists dealing with the economy and labor market point out that the needs related to the employment of foreigners will increase in the near future, which is due to, among others, from demographic trends. This is where the issue of accommodation for people who come to work in Poland arises.

– Housing issues are very important and should be an element of migration policy, because whether we manage to attract the appropriate number of labor migrants to Poland also depends to a large extent on the housing market, whether these people will have a place to live, what prices the apartments will cost, whether these will be apartments with appropriate comfort for them – says Dr. Hab. Mariusz Kowalski from the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw.

A serious task of the state is to regulate matters related to the accommodation of people coming to Poland for work purposes.

– In the employee housing industry, you can think about a way to influence this market through tax relief for investors who want to build such employee hotels, or in a similar way also influence other investors who could more easily build such apartments here and then make them available to foreign workers. – says the expert.

The employee accommodation market is estimated at approx. 180,000-350,000. beds in permanent or seasonal properties. This definition includes employee hotels and premises built for this purpose. Apartments and houses for long-term rental are more difficult to qualify. Some of them are used as employee accommodation, so they constitute part of the analyzed market. The authors of the report estimate that approximately 330,000-520,000 people report demand for this type of premises. people.

Importantly, almost three quarters of foreigners employed in our country perceive employee accommodation as a temporary solution at the initial stage of employment in Poland. With the lengthening of their stay and the growing sense of professional stability, migrants strive to find their own apartment. 42 percent foreigners working in Poland live in blocks of flats and tenement houses, which is important from the point of view of the social integration of immigrants. Every third person declares accommodation in a staff hotel. Specialists expect that this indicator will be lower and lower each year. The forecasted trend is related to the increasingly deeper adaptation of foreigners to our labor market.

According to the report, 47 percent immigrants used the help of an employer or employment agency with accommodation in Poland.

– This shows that they do not have to look for this accommodation at the start. The employer provides it for them and this is a very important factor attracting employees to our country – explains an expert from the Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Warsaw. – When Poles went abroad, they also had the same dilemma and very often looked for accommodation first and then looked for a job. I think we have a very similar problem here. It's hard to think about work if we don't have a place to live.

The authors of the report point out that a place of accommodation that gives a sense of security and stability is a key factor for foreigners in the context of the decision to take up work. The survey results show that almost half of immigrants (43%) first look for accommodation and only then find employment in the area. They take into account the quality of accommodation and the distance from the workplace.