Czech town buys building in order to evict Romani tenants

Conflicting reports are being heard from the Czech town of Čáslav regarding Romani residents there. While Mayor Jaromír Strnad (Czech Social Democrats – ČSSD) says half of the troubled Romani families in town have already moved away, Vít Lesák, the local consultant to the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion for Romani Localities in the nearby town of Kutná Hora, says Roma living in Čáslav should not have to leave the town en masse. Should such a step be necessary, Lesák told the Czech Press Agency the Romani families should settle nearby so their family ties will not be severed.

“We do not cooperate with that Agency. Their opinion on this issue is diametrically opposed to ours,” Strnad said.

Dozens of Romani tenants have moved into residential hotels in Čáslav in recent months. This was beneficial to the owners of these properties, who are renting out their properties to capacity and have been able to cash in on their tenants’ state-funded housing benefits. However, due to difficulties with the Romani arrivals, the town hall issued a decree banning the consumption of alcohol in public and then bought one of the buildings where they are live. That property now is slated to house the municipal archive and a nursery school. The tenants of the residential hotel, which is located on the town square, are to move out by the end of the year.

Strnad estimates that about 120 – 140 Romani people recently moved into town and are now leaving. Roughly half have already left. “Most are returning to where they came from,” the mayor said.

Lesák says the Agency discouraged the town hall from undertaking a radical solution. “We recommended the town do its best not to move these people out. If their removal is absolutely necessary, then we advised them to make sure these people got housing that is relatively nearby, because they have family connections to maintain,” Lesák said.

Lesák believes the Romani people moving out of Čáslav are fortunately not moving very far away. They are reportedly heading for Romani communities in the surrounding area, such as those in small villages in the direction of Kolín, in Kutná Hora’s Neškaredice quarter, and in the nearby town of Třebešicíce. Lesák also says the claims that Romani people were moving into Čáslav from Moravia or even from Slovakia are untrue. “These people might originally come from those places, but this is essentially a second phase of their migration. They have all been leaving here in Bohemia during the past few years,” he said.

People in Kutná Hora, where Romani residents live particularly in the Neškaredice quarter, are following the situation in Čáslav with mild concern. “Čáslav is up in arms because Romani people moved into properties located on the main square, which is unpleasant for them. On the other hand, families or groups of Roma are constantly moving in and out of Neškaredice,” Mayor Ivo Šanc (“A Chance for Kutná Hora” – Šance pro Kutnou Horu) said. He is skeptical that the situation can be resolved. “Some [government] Concept isn’t going to do much with this. We are taking care of preventive measures, we’ll have security assistants in place and we are looking for options to address their housing in a serious way, but naturally there is no good solution,” he said.

Starting next year, crime prevention assistants should start working in Neškaredice as part of the Úsvit (“Dawn”) project supported by the Czech Interior Ministry. The assistants will help municipal police. “Eventually they will be able to independently get involved with ordinary, non-criminal problems like children’s school attendance, order, disturbances of nighttime quiet, etc.,” the mayor said.

“They will supervise order and children’s school attendance. They will not have the powers of a patrol officer, but they will be facilitators for us,” Václav Mareček, a representative of the patrolmen in Kutná Hora, told news server iDNES.cz. For the time being, the town hall has selected five candidates, three of whom will become prevention assistants next April.

The aim is for the Romani community to integrate more easily into the majority society. “We don’t have big problems with the Romani community. Sometimes we have to address disturbances of order or the peace, but mostly they have difficulties with their social situations, they are not good at finding work. We want to avoid problems, to prevent them,” Šanc told news server iDNES.cz. He estimates that about 500 Romani people live in Kutná Hora and the surrounding area.

Representatives of the Čáslav town hall say the “new” Roma are turning up not only in their area, but in other Central Bohemian towns such as Benešov, Kolín and Nymburk. Lesák, however, does not believe such reports are very important. According to the data the Agency has at its disposal, it is not true that Romani migration into the region has recently significantly increased. “The migration is being discussed more, or you can have the isolated case of a few families being blown out of proportion and becoming more visible. This is a function of media attention,” Lesák believes.