[Grzegrzolka]

Same thing happens in Poland. There are only 4-5 rather small cities with good jobs + shitload of skilled and unskilled Ukrainian immigrants (like really, there are days when I walk through town and 80% people I pass by speak Ukrainian) + Airbnb craziness + no regulations + shitty politicians = it became impossible to rent or buy even small apartment if you are not highly skilled or not willing to share room with someone you don't know. It all happend in last 4-5 years. I was born in one of these towns (Krakow) and it just hurts me to see huge division in society, clearly there are lots of rich people that are getting richer every month, buying multiple houses and renting, and there are shitload of (some of them university educated) people living in tiny old Soviet era apartments (imagine whole family and dog in 400-450sqft). Actually many people don't even dream about own place. Both my parents and my grandparents were able to buy apartment without having any sort of education, today if I wasn't Software Dev I would be homeless. We are talking Poland here, can't imagine how much worse it must be in other actually real countries.

[TrackerFF]

I worked on a project here in Norway, and I'd say that about 60%-70% of all construction worker on active projects here are Polish workers. Everyone said that buying an apartment or house is just too expensive on Polish salaries, but doable on the salaries they were making here.

The Poles here are extremely aggressive when it comes to work. They will gladly work 7 days a week, 12 hour days, if they get the chance. And many will share apartments with 3-5 other guys, to minimize living costs.

[durnygbur]

What else they can do in a depressing dark cold exorbitantly expensive place? Such foreigner is quite literally feeling paralyzed. Use all available time to exchange it for money. Any place to stay they get will be an overcrowded shithole anyway, which is yet another motivation to stay in work.

Meanwhile young Scandinavians flood Polish coastal cities for binges with cheap and freely available alcohol, and staying at airbnb at prices ridiculous for Polish salaries.

We build your stuff, you cover our streets with vomit. Yet you still feel superior.

[dang]

Nationalistic flamewar isn't allowed on HN, so please don't post like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've been crossing into this repeatedly in HN comments. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so please stop doing that.

[oblio]

> Yet you still feel superior.

$$$.

I'm Romanian so I'm kind of in the same boat regarding your situation. Might makes right. Make more money and prove them wrong.

Well, money's just a summary: get a better education, better living conditions, etc. Money well spent earns you respect.

[AstralStorm]

Even in Warsaw, where there are many building projects, the prices are very high. As a dev I had to save for a bunch of years to afford it. (Calculated it to be more efficient and safer in terms of risk than mortgage.)

Sellers indeed noticed that the prices exceeded what most can pay, even in Greater Warsaw.

[Scoundreller]

Just curious: are the UK immigrants knowledgeable/fluent in Polish? Or do they just work in English? Or just Ukrainian and get any job to get by?

[yuft]

The abbreviation for Ukraine is UA.

[leemailll]

Krakow is small? I think it is one of largest cities in Poland

[frobozz]

Krakow is the second or third most populous city in Poland. However, the population of the whole metropolitan area is ca 1.3 Million. [1] or 1.7 Million [2]

At the larger estimate, that's about as big as Oxford or Slough, smaller than Swindon. At the smaller, High Wycombe or Grimsby [3], none of which would appear on a list of Big British Cities.

It's about 38 in the list of EU Larger Urban Zones [4]. Seven German cities appear higher in that list.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Uni... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone

[eru]

> At the larger estimate, that's about as big as Oxford or Slough, smaller than Swindon.

Wikipedia says even the Oxford metro area is only 244,000 people vs about 700k people for Krakow city alone.

[frobozz]

You're right. I can't work out what I misread to get that statement. It's not as if I could have just misplaced a multiple of 10. It's just wrong.