Ferkai András: Housing Estates - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

After World War I

■ Entrance to a block on the itate homing e&tate on Pongrác út

of the short-lived 1919 Republic of Councils, which did not have an opportunity to build much. Discouraged by unfavourable conditions such as the rigid regulation of housing management, rapid inflation and increased rates and taxes, venture capital altogether withdrew from the housing industry after the war. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarian refugees from the territories cut off from Hungary by the Treaty of Trianon sought refuge in what remained of the country. These asylum-seekers were at first billeted in schools and public buildings before they were accommodated in hospital units requisitioned from the army and turned into temporary lodgings (the Mária Valéria, the Ehmann, the Auguszta, the Gubacsi út, the Lenke út and the Zita barracks). This, however, proved insufficient, and new arrivals, instead of getting off their railway cars, were obliged to become carriage-dwellers. The state and the city could not possibly shirk the responsibility involved in the situation, and had to accommodate these crowds of homeless refugees.

The government built two larger housing estates after these temporary colonies in the i92os-one in Pongrác utca, the other in Juranics utca. The idea had been raised back in 1918. Designs for a cluster of buildings on a plot at 17 Pongrác utca were in fact made under the Károlyi government, but these could not be built

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