The chance to rehabilitate the facades of historic buildings Amendment of Law 153/2011

I would like to set things on the right track from the outset: amending and supplementing Law no. 153/2011 on measures to increase the architectural-environmental quality of buildings is not the miracle solution we are all waiting for, the one that, overnight, will turn our historic monument-houses and, by extension, our cities into tourist gems besieged by foreign visitors.

The amendment of Law 153/2011, already made for the second time, could (and I emphasize this conditional, could) save some of what can still be saved. And, of course, there follows a long string of "ifs"...

But let's start at the beginning: Timișoara has the chance to boast the most extensive area of protected buildings in Romania, most of them being houses/palaces with the main function of housing. In 2010, Timisoara, together with the Ministry of Finance, signed an extremely advantageous financing contract with KfW, the German Government Development Bank, for the rehabilitation of historic buildings in Timisoara. The duration of the contract was until December 31, 2015.

In addition, like other cities in Romania, Oradea, Cluj, Arad, etc., Timisoara, in 2013, also created its own regulation for co-financing the rehabilitation works of historical buildings, based on Law 153/2011, according to the provisions of the law. The principle was similar to what happens with the thermo-insulation of blocks of flats: the state, in this case the city hall, bears the cost of the works, and then recovers the money, in the form of a monthly installment. The main difference between the two programs was the type of eligible works, the German-funded program being much more generous than Law 153/2011.

Let me be clear about one thing: these houses whose unkempt facades bother us as passers-by have much more serious problems, and each of them has a different 'portfolio' of problems. And I mean several categories of problems. There are the legal ones: most of them are encumbered by 20-year-long claims processes, mortgages, promises to sell, uncertain status as tenants or owners, all leading, in many cases, to strained relations between those who live there.

Then there is the state of the building. What we see outside, we find inside. A building that's 'trashed' on the outside is likely to be trashed on the inside too: unsanitary conditions, sagging ceilings, damaged roofs, cracked walls, makeshift toilets, damp, parasitic construction, stored rubble and so on. And, last but not least, a large number of owners, with major differences in terms of financial situation, but also in level of education.

In this colorful mix, it is difficult to convince 10, 20 or 50 owners living in the same house to rehabilitate the facade of the building when they have much more serious problems in terms of living conditions!

These are some of the results of thousands of hours of work to convince owners and dozens of technical assessments of buildings in Timisoara, part of the Financing Contract with the German Government, which have given us the scale of the phenomenon we are facing.

In the spring of 2014, the Ministry of Public Finance informed us that the Financing Agreement with the German Government had no legal basis, that nowhere in Romanian law does it say that the City Hall can execute (and finance) works on a historical monument building with private owners, and then recover its money. The financial principle was the same for both programs. So, there followed the suspension of the programs, and together with the chief architect of Timișoara at that time, Ciprian Cădariu, long trips to the Ministry of Public Finance, meetings with public administrations in the western part of the country that had the same problems as us, meetings with the owners of the buildings that had decided to enter our programs, thinking of a new financing program based on Law 153/2011, involving the banking sector in the financing system.

Even if the banks that granted housing loans showed openness to this market, the legislative bottlenecks were the same. So, in January 2015, through the Timisoara MPs, we proposed a series of amendments to Law 153/2011, aimed at creating a financial mechanism, but also at introducing new types of eligible works.

In October 2015, together with the chief architect of Timișoara, Ciprian Cădariu, the Romanian Order of Architects and the Timiș territorial branch of the Order - arch. Șerban Țigănaș, arh. Șerban Sturdza, arh. Rudolf Gräf, arh. Oana Simionescu - we launched, in Timișoara, Act for Heritage, a document intended as an alarm signal that this cannot go on, and we invited the Romanian Government as a partner to form a working group to amend the current legislation, to bring it into line with the existing one and to connect it to European concerns in the field.

The situation of privately-owned historic buildings, which form the heart of our cities, can no longer be managed on the basis of legislation dating back to 2001 - Law 422 on the protection of historic monuments - which has been patched and patched up, and Law 153/2011 is not a law designed to protect and preserve historic monuments. I know that the Minister for Culture, Vlad Alexandrescu, has set up a working group and that they are working on a Heritage Code, which is what I am pinning my hopes on: a fresh start, based on the current reality and repealing outdated legislation. I hope this work will be completed, even if Minister Vlad Alexandrescu has been changed.

The amendments to Law 153/2011 allow municipalities to get involved in bearing the costs for certain types of works, provided that all the owners of the building agree. The law may now unlock the financial mechanism, but there are still many issues to be resolved before the inauguration ribbon can be cut. What the conditions are for this money will be decided on a case-by-case basis, by local council resolutions and at the will of the local councils.

We all remember the unreal declarations of many mayors, made in 2013, after the first amendment of Law 153/2011, when some promised 100 "refurbished" buildings, while others were promising 200 per year! It is a wrong and harmful approach. And I dare to say one thing that (the administration) probably won't like: it's not the refurbishment of facades that is the main problem with these buildings. If we want to continue to enjoy an architectural heritage that we are proud of, because it is part of our cultural identity, we should not paint it, but preserve it. This is why the big gain of the amendment to Law 153/2011 is the fact that we have managed to include among the eligible works also those of consolidation: of exterior walls, of the roofing system, but also the replacement of exterior joinery that has been destroyed or damaged by inappropriate interventions.

The law still has many minuses: for example, works to strengthen or rehabilitate interior common areas - stairwells or basements - are not eligible for these funds. I hope, however, that public administrations will think in terms that benefit the building, not the owners, when allocating this money and encourage owners to carry out interior work at their own expense, which will improve the general condition of the building and not be tempted by the mirage of easy work with an immediate impact.