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Can the Poland's apartment building coop be forced to fix the building's front door?


freespeechrocks 1 | -
16 Mar 2013 #1
Hi - I recently bought an apartment in a building in Krakow. The building's front door (the only means of egress/exit) does not close by itself. The mechanism that normally pulls the door shut has been removed. This means that at any given point in the day or night I can find the building's front door wide open, as not every person who lives in the building takes a moment to pull the door shut. The bottom line is that when the front door is left ajar, anyone can have full access to the building. As I live on the ground floor, I am very concerned.

Having lived in Poland long enough, I know that it is possible that I have no leverage over the coop with regards to forcing them to fix the door. Further, there is some long-term work scheduled on the interior of this building over the next two years, including the overhaul of the front door. This was explicitly detailed in the contract we signed with the coop. The building is a registered historical landmark. Clearly, the plan is to leave the door be until the interior renovations to the common space are complete. But nowhere in the contract did it indicate that the coop could leave the front door in its current degraded status. There is no justification in my mind that would allow a board to abdicate this responsibility.

Does the coop/board have a legal obligation established by local, country or federal government to provide for the security of the building's inhabitants? Specifically, I am referring to the front door. If there is no legal obligation, is there any other leverage anyone can suggest I might have with the board?

I really appreciate your answers. Thanks.
Lenka 5 | 3,490
16 Mar 2013 #2
Does the coop/board have a legal obligation established by local, country or federal government to provide for the security of the building's inhabitants?

The doors still have a lock right? So it's not insecure.
f stop 25 | 2,503
16 Mar 2013 #3
My guess would be that you might have better luck petitioning all the inhabitants of the co-op to be vigilant about closing the door.
If you want to play dirty, start urinating in the corridor each time you see that door ajar. ;)
Grzegorz_ 51 | 6,148
16 Mar 2013 #4
Not sure who's "the coop" but usually If you own a flat in a building having many apartments, you are a member of wspólnota or spółdzielnia, a kind of cooperative and people managing it are elected by members/owners, so they shouldn't ignore your problems, especially when It's easy to solve and you have support of other owners... I would write a petition, get it signed by all the flat owners in the building and then "management" should not ignore that... If they do, just collect the money among the flat owners, get it fixed on your own (it sounds like a matter of buying some kind of spring and having one semi-skilled worker to install it) and let the "management" know that they are koonts and you will do what you can to get them removed.

But having the front door opened is not really threatening your life...
delphiandomine 88 | 18,131
12 Jan 2021 #5
The bottom line is that when the front door is left ajar, anyone can have full access to the building.

This is still a major problem in some properties. A friend has non-stop problems with drunks urinating in her hallway because of it.

But yes, the management of the cooperative should fix it.
JacekthePole 1 | 51
13 Jan 2021 #6
My question is whether they can be forced to do a quality replacement. Our COOP does do the fixes but always using low quality materials which means 6-12 months later we have an issue again


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