In Polish legislation all contacts between an authority and a citizen (in administrative, penal, tax or civil procedures) should be conducted in writing and delivered to the citizen’s home or work address. In most cases it is done by a registered letter, meaning that the letter can be handed over only to the hands of the addressee (or an adult family member, neighbour or the landlord, but only if they agree to hand the letter over to the addressee), and if the addressee is not available, the delivery person leaves a standardised notification on where the letter can be picked up (usually the nearest post office). If the addressee does not pick the letter up in seven days, another notification is left at their address. After fourteen days the letter is returned to its sender. There is a legal fiction in Polish legislation of so called “fictional delivery” which says that the delivery is considered successful after fourteen days regardless whether the addressee did actually receive the letter or not.
In case of the homeless people this causes problems. Usually the authorities send the letters to the last known address of the citizen, and they do so even in case of the homeless people living in institutions. As a result, the authority considers the homeless citizen informed (for example of a lawsuit against them), and the citizen has no idea about it which may cause legal consequences including penal procedures (for example for not coming to the court).
A homeless institution in Warsaw made very short descriptions of a few homeless men who had to face the consequences of the fictional delivery in the last two years. In most cases the consequences included arrests or the actions of bailiff.
