Housing Estates in Europe by Daniel Baldwin Hess & Tiit Tammaru & Maarten van Ham

Author:Daniel Baldwin Hess & Tiit Tammaru & Maarten van Ham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319928135
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

9.5 Post-socialist Transition and the Challenges of Large Housing Estates

During the post-socialist transition, various phases of development could be distinguished in housing estates. In the first period (early 1990s), the most important factor affecting the development of housing estates was privatisation (Sailer-Fliege 1997; Hegedüs 2013). By the late 1990s, only 5–6% of the housing stock in housing estates remained in the hands of local governments. Increasing private home ownership paved the way for market-led property development and residential mobility. A high level of comfort was one of the main advantages of pre-fabricated housing estates before 1990. That very same feature became the main disadvantage after 1990, due to rapidly rising housing costs, especially energy costs (Egedy 2000). After privatisation, the new owners living in pre-fabricated housing estates had to face a difficult situation: the relative value of apartments in pre-fabricated buildings declined while running costs drastically increased. As a consequence, lower status residents in housing estates often became trapped: they could not sell their flats or buy another one of similar quality; thus, their housing career ended (Hegedüs and Tosics 1998). Rapidly rising housing costs were connected with inefficient central heating systems and the insufficient insulation of houses, therefore, rehabilitation interventions were needed urgently.

The second development period started with the rehabilitation of housing estates in 1997. In 1996, the Ministry of Economy, the Hungarian Development Bank and the German Creditanstalt für Wiederaufbau created a 30-million deutsche mark (ca. 3 billion HUF at the current exchange rate) credit facility in order to support energy saving renewal (Government Decree 105/1996). It was the first important intervention in the history of pre-fabricated buildings organised by the state. Under the scheme, 75% of the renovation costs in panel buildings could be financed by the credit construction. The loan programme was extended several times until 2001, yet only about one-third (950 million HUF) of the budget was drawn, because of the strict conditions. Also in 1997, the Energy Saving Loan Program was launched, whereby municipalities could get a loan totalling of 800 million HUF. The programme continued with an additional one billion HUF credit facility in 1998. These early regeneration programmes paved the way for a large-scale, nationwide intervention called ‘Panel Programme’ where the European Union took a lion’s share.

The Panel Programme, signalling the third development phase of housing estates, was launched in 2001. The EU-funded renovation programme targeted the improvement of energy efficiency in pre-fabricated buildings. It has been renamed and restructured several times since its start, but it is still the most prominent and largest state-financed residential rehabilitation programme in Hungary (Panel I, 2001–2008; Panel II, 2009–2013; Panel III, 2014–2020). Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to obtain accurate and tangible data on the number of renewed apartments and the amount of public subsidies used in the programme, as there are different numbers in government (national and local) and other professional documents. According to the latest data, a total of 320,000 pre-fabricated dwellings have been renovated in Hungary in the Panel Programme between 2000 and 2014.

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