Czech ministries, municipal govt pass the buck on Přednádraží street

The ProAlt Ostrava organization and the SOS Přednádraží collective have issued the following press release, which news server Romea.cz publishes in full translation below:

During September and October, the SOS Přednádraží Initiative repeatedly called on the Ostrava town hall (specifically, Mayor Petr Kajnar), on the Czech Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, and on the Czech Ministry for Regional Development to see through a rapid resolution to the situation on Přednádraží street in Ostrava that would be acceptable to local residents. The Initiative also called on these institutions to treat the citizens living on Přednádraží street as partners in this process of resolving the situation and not to decide things "about them without them".

During the month of November, we received responses to our call.

All of the responses share the fact that each institution claims it has no power to resolve the situation on Přednádraží street in accordance with our ideas. The Ministry for Regional Development states that "as a central administrative authority it cannot intervene to resolve concrete cases other than through an administrative proceedings and cannot substitute for the competency of local public administration bodies and their responsibility to act" and delegates its responsibility in this matter to the relevant Regional Authority. The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry declares its interest in resolving the situation of the families living on Přednádraží street, but says at the same time that it "does not bear direct responsibility for the situation in Ostrava as such and primarily is not authorized to decide on the next steps to be taken by the town of Ostrava."

As for the response from the Mayor of Ostrava, he states that "most of the activities and decisions undertaken in this matter are performed by the state, specifically, bodies of the state administration, without the municipality having a legal option for entering into the decision-making of those bodies", and he arrogantly recommends that the authors "familiarize themselves with the principles of operation of municipalities and the state administration in the Czech Republic."

The full wording of these responses (in Czech only) is available online as follows: Ministry for Regional Development (http://sosprednadrazi.cz/press/reakce_pn_min_rozvoj.pdf), Labor and Social Affairs Ministry (http://sosprednadrazi.cz/press/reakce_pn_min_soc.pdf) and the Ostrava Town Hall (http://sosprednadrazi.cz/press/reakce_pn_magistrat.pdf).

What more can we say? The Romani Coordinator at the Ostrava Town Hall, Mr Chytil, participated in a panel discussion entitled "What did we learn on Přednádraží street" held on 23 October, at which he would only say that the Ostrava Town Hall cannot intervene in social housing policy, specifically, into the assigning of municipally-owned apartments, as that is completely within the powers of the individual municipalities of the town. The municipality of Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz offered most of the residents of Přednádraží street substitute accommodation in privately-owned, overpriced residential hotels after the Building Works Authority called on them to immediately vacate their apartments from one day to the next.

These residential hotels are more or less isolated from the world around them. Dysentery epidemics are not exceptional in these places, where water services are intermittent and five or more people must share the same room. A spokesperson for the town hall, Ms Pondělíčková, explained to television news reporters that the town hall supposedly wants to be a good manager, which is why it will not be providing municipally-owned apartments to people who have long been living on social welfare. However, a good manager doesn’t send people to live in unsuitable private residential hotels where they are forced to use their state social benefits to pay the owners rents equivalent to those charged for luxurious apartments in the center of town. Does the town own too few apartments? Why has it sold them off so cheap and so fast?

The activists from the SOS Přednádraží initiative, in collaboration with other civic initiatives and individuals from Ostrava and other towns, are using their modest possibilities to help where the municipality and state administration are failing. We have succeeded in finding one of the families from Přednádraží street – who by the way are completely solvent and still have a valid rental contract with the town – to find a "normal" apartment on the commercial real estate market. This is the equivalent of a small miracle for a Romani family with children in Ostrava. We have also helped another family, a woman with six children who was forced to move into the residential hotel, mainly by becoming, as she herself says "her family, her new sons and daughters", giving her the certainty that she is not alone, that she won’t "end up at the residential hotel forever", and that it makes sense to keep fighting and to be engaged as a citizen. In her case, the local municipality has truly seen the light and has promised her a municipally-owned apartment within one month instead of one room at the residential hotel where the rent is more than CZK 17 000 a month.

How many children, how many families, are being helped by absolutely no one? How many remain without hope in a place where they have only the minimum opportunity to lead a normal family life, to have normal childhoods? According to information from the Life Together civic association, these families are paying rents in the residential hotels that are an average of CZK 7 000 to CZK 8 000 higher than they paid on Přednádraží street. Most, but not all, of that rent is covered by the state through social benefits that end up in the pockets of the landlords, and there is yet another serious encumbrance of these families’ budgets. During the time these families were still living on Přednádraží street, the town hall stopped providing them its municipal housing benefit. This means these families can often only resolve their situations by borrowing money from loan sharks, with all of the consequences such a step entails.

In recent days, repairs have begun to one building on Přednádraží street with the aim of fixing all of the flaws enumerated by the Building Works Authority that led to the occupants of the building losing the opportunity to live there legally. The repairs are financed completely by civic initiatives and are being performed mostly by the local occupants themselves. Everyone hopes that once they are completed, the Building Works Authority of Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz will recognize the building as fit for occupancy and the Moravská Ostrava and Přívoz Municipal Authority will recognize at least some of the families from Přednádraží street once again as having the status of citizens with permanent residency in rental apartments and all of the rights and obligations that status entails.

Why should civic initiatives and individuals have to substitute for the activity of the municipality and state administration, who are paid from our taxes to work for us? Where is the problem here? Are the laws bad? Is there no political will? Is something wrong with the very approach taken by state bureaucrats toward socially disadvantaged localities, i.e., toward the ghettos, where, according to Kumar Vishwanathan of Life Together, residents are under constant observation like "bugs under a microscope"? Or is this just a political calculation involving the ever-increasing anti-Romani racism of Czech society?

We are planning to call on our leading politicians through a public letter with several specific questions regarding this issue. We will keep you informed about this letter and their responses.