Housing for the poor a social time bomb in Czech Republic

The situation of the poorest people in this country is critical and neither municipalities nor the state are resolving it. There is no work for them, no equal education for them, and not enough dignified housing for them. A social time bomb is ticking here. Once it explodes, municipal and state representatives will "wash their hands of it" and make alibistic statements, as they always do on such occasions. The atmosphere in society is set for asocial behavior on the part of politicians. Poor people, including Romani people living in the ghettos, are indiscriminately considered parasites feeding off of the rest of us.

The solidarity so necessary to social cohesion has been degraded by the current cabinet, which has produced laws and measures aimed against the poorest of the poor first and foremost. This is a short-sighted policy. Social cohesion is important for the health of all of society; the satisfaction of wealthier people also depends on it. German politicians were well aware of this when they put their country, destroyed by war, back on its feet by introducing the welfare state, and that model was a brilliant European contribution to the discussion on how to address mutual coexistence.

Lack of social housing

What is symptomatic of the current situation in the Czech Republic is the fact that the media, with the exception of the Přednádraží scandal, did not report on the poor people’s housing crisis or on protests against government policy in this area until several human rights activists forced their way into the building of the Czech Labor and Social Affairs Ministry yesterday and were arrested by riot police. The police proceeded brutally and indiscriminately, as is their habit. The activists deserve thanks.

Social housing policy practically does not exist in this country, or does not function in practice as it should. There are countless proofs for such a claim from the lives of the people concerned. Only a few nonprofit organizations are taking an interest in them, and even they are sometimes persecuted for doing their best to help the needy. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

Ústí nad Labem, Předlice

People are gradually moving away from the Předlice quarter of Ústí nad Labem, where building inspectors say almost 30 buildings are defective. For the time being, only people who were living in a building on Beneše Lounského street, a property labeled unfit for habitation by structural engineers, have had to move. Tenants in the other buildings, of course, will soon follow, and there is a risk that many of them will end up on the street because there will be nowhere else to accommodate them.

Many of the buildings in Předlice are in a poor state of repair. The municipality carelessly sold them off some time ago to their current owners, who have not taken care of the properties and are letting them deteriorate. Some of them purchased the buildings, mortgaged them, and never maintained them at all.

The town does not want to help the evacuated tenants, saying that their landlord is supposed to find them substitute housing. That is true, but since the landlord is taking no action in this case, the town is still obligated to take care of accommodating those of its citizens who find themselves deprived of housing.

"The municipality is obliged by law to provide housing to tenants who lose their homes and must be well-prepared to do so. This should not disproportionately burden the municipality, but on the other hand, they must take care of their citizens. The costs incurred for securing these buildings can then be recouped from the real estate owners," Martin Šimáček, director of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion, told news server Romea.cz. Ústí town councilors, however, are not much interested in the law.

Ústí na Labem, Krásné Březno

People from the building that has already been evacuated ended up in a residential hotel in the Krásné Březno quarter, which increased their cost of living, as they now have to pay overpriced rents and the cost of their children commuting farther to school. The owner of the building in which the residential hotel is located is closing it by the end of January, i.e., the day after tomorrow, which has introduced further complications.

Some have done their best to find decent accommodation on their own, but most of the residential hotel residents have come up short against what is unfortunately a common phenomenon today, discrimination. The Romani tenants are being directly, openly rejected by landlords and real estate offices because of their ethnicity.

Three nonprofit organizations have also helped with the apartment search, but the residential hotel residents rejected some of the apartments they found because they were hygienically flawed – infested with bedbugs, cockroaches, etc. The question is how long their resolve to stay away from such properties will last once they are forced to leave the residential hotel.

For the time being, 10 families (more than 30 people) still have not found housing. Some, however, have managed to find housing, either thanks to their collaboration with the nonprofits, or through their own initiative.

Back to Předlice

One tenant, Ms Iveta, wanted to move back to Předlice provided her entire extended family (comprised of three nuclear families) could stay together. She initially found several apartments available, but the rents were too high.

"The landlord wanted to charge me more than CZK 10 000 [EUR 390] for a one-bedroom, CZ 9 000 rent plus utilities," she told us. "Where would I get that kind of money? I only get CZK 9 000 a month altogether for subsistence, including for the children."

Ms Iveta then managed to find three one-bedroom apartments in Předlice where the rent would be CZK 4 000 each plus water fees. Of course, the apartments are completely empty, without furniture or heating systems, and their hot water heaters need to be replaced, etc. Ms Iveta had left her furniture behind in the building she had to evacuate because she had nowhere else to put it, and in the meantime the building has been robbed.

It will take some time before these families are set up in their new housing.

Until then, it is unknown what will happen to them. They might temporarily end up on the street, as others have, or they might temporarily accept other housing while waiting for their new places to be ready, but they can’t pay rent on two places at once.

"If they could just hold off on closing the residential hotel for at least 14 days," Ms Iveta sighs, exasperated by her powerlessness. She and other members of her family and their acquaintances also participated in the demonstration at the Czech Labor Ministry yesterday against the government’s asocial housing policy.

Ostrava, Palackého street

The building at 97 Palackého Street is very near the famous Přednádraží locality in Ostrava. Last autumn, the new owner of the building decided to reconstruct it, so the tenants, most of whom are Romani, had to move out. Some of the tenants’ leases expired and the new owner refused to renew them, but the extended family of Ms Eva (her family and her father’s family) have open-ended leases. Ultimately they too were pressured to move out, even though the owner did not meet his obligation to find them adequate housing, but offered them smaller apartments with fixed-term leases. They had lived on Palackého street for 15 years.

This was neither the first nor the last such stint for the two families, which total 11 members. Their accommodation in a property held by another private owner hasn’t worked out either, and they have been given notice. The deadline by which they have to move out expires soon. It seems that Ms Eva had the audacity to criticize the Palackého street landlord to the media, and the owner of the building in which the family is currently living didn’t like her criticism of real estate entrepreneurs.

The families are now waiting for the municipal housing lottery to assign them an apartment. However, Ms Eva does not have very much faith that Romani people can find an apartment that way in Ostrava.

Members of both families are sick of being constantly forced to move house, which is why they have found two garages, reconstructed into housing units, into which they are determined to move so they can be left alone. Each garage measures roughly nine meters square. "I am seriously no longer amused that we are constantly chased from place to place as if we were some sort of game being hunted, I’d rather go live in those garages," Ms Eva says bitterly.

Ostrava, Přednádraží street

News server Romea.cz has previously published many articles about the situation on Přednádraží street. The Municipal Department of Moravská Ostrava a Přívoz in Ostrava has done its best to get people to move out of the housing on Přednádraží street at any cost.

Most recently the ČEZ power company turned the electricity off to the few remaining families still living there. The utility is willing to restore service only if a new common meter is installed, which requires reinstalling the wiring and purchasing a meter.

"We are still doing our best so people can keep on living on Přednádraží street. We have already invested a total of more than CZK 300 000 [EUR 11 700] into repairing one of the buildings there. Installing the electric meter will cost roughly another CZK 50 000," Kumar Vishwanathan, chair of the Life Together (Vzájemné soužití) association, which helps Romani people throughout the Moravian-Silesian Region and elsewhere, told news server Romea.cz.

Of course, the electricity cannot be turned on until spring because people don’t have enough money now to pay for it. "The people living on Přednádraží street are not receiving housing or utilities benefits because they are living in the building without permission. The Building Works Authority has banned occupancy of the property. Moreover, Czech Railways [editors’ note: the previous owner] found a way to dodge high taxes several years back by having the buildings on Přednádraží street classified as non-residential properties," Vishwanathan said.

Tenants on Přednádraží are incurring other expenses they can’t pay:  Their water fees have been raised and they are unable to pay them. As a result of freezing temperatures and the fact that only a few apartments in the building are occupied, water had previously been leaking in more than one part of the building, so now the tenants are only able to draw water at a single ground-floor location. However, that source has now frozen shut, so the tap will have to be replaced.

We always stand up for those who are deprived

The Life Together association has even been punished for assisting the poorest of the poor. The Municipal Department of Moravská Ostrava a Přívoz recently evicted the association from the offices where it has long run its legal and social work counseling center.

"The municipal department informed us that it needs this site for its own bureaucrats, but the local authority’s website shows the space as available for rent," Vishwanathan told us. "I feel like this is an attack on freedom of speech. The Moravská Ostrava a Přívoz council is behaving a bit towards us like those in power behaved toward people prior to 1989. It’s as if they’re doing their best to silence us, or to force us to conform to their economic and political interests as far as Přednádraží street is concerned, but we are part of civil society and we can’t be party to any such thing. We always stand up for those who are deprived."