Platform for Social Housing calls on Czech Labor Minister to withdraw her cancellation of housing benefits

The Platform for Social Housing has formulated a letter to Czech Labor and Social Affairs Minister Jana Maláčová expressing their concern over her proposed revisions to housing benefits. Platform representatives delivered the letter to ministry representatives on Wedneday, 26 June after a press conference at 10 AM in front of the ministry that was broadcast live by ROMEA TV.

In the letter, the Platform points out basic deficiencies in the draft law on housing allowances, which is abolishing the two existing housing benefits, the housing contribution and the housing supplement. Those measures are meant to be replaced by a new benefit, the housing supplement.

"We are asking you to reassess this plan and remove the bill from discussion," the Platform's letter reads. "The proposal, at a time of rising rents, will negatively impact a broad group of those who draw on the housing contribution in order live in rental apartments and will absolutely stop the disbursal of benefits to those living in residential hotels. Where the people now living in the residential hotels will go is not described by this proposal, just as it does not describe where the people who will again find themselves out of housing will go, those for whom, for the time being, residential hotels have been the only affordable solution. This would be an unprecedented intervention into the social security system that would affect hundreds of thousands of people endangered by losing their housing and would push thousands of families into homelessness."