The Military Housing Fund in Pre-War Poland

Abstract

The initiative to establish the Military Housing Fund (Fundusz Kwaterunku Wojskowego, FKW) was launched in 1925 in the Polish Senate, which, during considering the draft Act on accommodation for the army in peacetime adopted by the Polish Sejm opposed the possibility provided for by the draft law (causing social unrest) to seize (for a compensation) private premises for permanent accommodation for officers and married non-commissioned officers, in a situation where other (specified in the Act) methods of acquiring housing for this purpose did not bring the expected results. The Senate voted in favour of the construction and maintenance of residential buildings intended as permanent housing for the military by a specially established FKW. A fundamental role in the structure of its financing (as non-returnable income) was played by the accommodation tax. However, it covered the same premises and the same people who were already burdened with the municipal tax on premises and the state tax on premises. The situation in which the same premises and the same individuals were burdened, according to the same rules, with three taxes (in the total amount of up to 15% of rent), changed on 2 August 1926 with the enactment of the Act on the tax on premises, which replaced the previous ones and the new tax was to be collected starting from 1 August 1926, also for the purposes of the FKW (a total of 114,174,379 Polish zlotys was paid to the FKW account by the end of 1938). This solution, combined with the authorisation of the FKW to take out (with the guarantee of the Government) a loan of up to 140 million zlotys, allowed the FKW to pursue a quite broad construction activity, which resulted (in the period 1927–1937) in 7,334 dwellings for officers and married non-commissioned officers (in 1938 a total of 1,577 dwellings were under construction).