More Roma Evicted in the Process of Public Housing Privatisation in Czech Republic

18 May 2007

On 21 August 2006, the Prague Daily Monitor reported that municipal authorities in Ostrava's Slezska Ostrava District sold flats housing fifteen Romani families to Trimex Majetkova, a private company. Prior to the sale, district authorities signed one-year leases with the Romani residents, extendible at the end of this period if the tenants paid their rent. However, as reported by the Prague Daily Monitor, Mr Robert Svec, Chairman of the Board of Trimex Majetkova, announced that the company would not extend the lease agreements at the end of the period.

As a result, four Romani families had already left their homes at the time of the publication. District authorities had reportedly promised to provide adequate housing to the remaining eleven families, on the condition that they find some seasonal work, and that the district would help them to do this. The Prague Daily Monitor quoted Ostrava's Deputy Mayor for Social Affairs Mr Zbynek Prazak as having criticised the district's undertaking, saying that the allocation of social flats cannot depend on such conditions.

This situation is part of a widespread trend in Czech Republic and other countries whereby municipal authorities sell public housing to private companies, which then upgrade the buildings and make the renovated flats available for rent at rates unaffordable to their former residents. This process is contributing to the further ghettoisation and marginalisation of Romani communities, which was highlighted in a report published by the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in September 2006. According to the government's report, the number of Roma living in low-standard houses and slums is on the rise in the Czech Republic, according to the results of research in more than 300 Romani neighbourhoods housing some 80,000 residents.

According to the study, there is no complex programme concept to focus on the fight against social exclusion, but only individual projects that are not interlinked. Moreover, there is a deep contradiction between state interest and the municipal authorities' approach to Romani issues. While the state claims to be working towards the social integration of Roma, municipalities are pushing Roma further from cities and towns into slums.

(Prague Daily Monitor)