Czech bill on housing support heads to a second reading, Pirates say the Civic Democrats have "taken the bones" out of it

The bill is counting on creating contact points in municipalities with expanded scope which will provide advice to tenants on how to prevent housing loss. The bill was drafted at the Ministry for Regional Development under the direction of the previous minister, Ivan Bartoš (Pirates).

Adoption of the bill was first delayed by committees in the lower house saying they did not consider it developed enough and then by obstruction from the opposition. “The bill on housing support will be on the table of the men and women of the lower house on 4 March for a second reading. That means they will get a chance to pay the debt that Czech politics has been saddled with since the revolution. Whether this involves addressing housing need or preventing housing loss, the bill and its instruments might aid as many as 1.6 million people in Czechia – it’s not just about the most impoverished, by far,” Kulhánek said.

The minister added that along with investments into the building of municipally-owned apartments, the bill is yet another important step on the way to more affordable housing in Czechia. In addition to new contact points, the bill would also create a voluntary system of guarantees to private landlords, so-called “housing with a pledge”, as well as a system of financial contributions for municipalities which rent apartments to people in need of them.

The bill would also provide assistance with housing to help supported households with maintaining their housing while minimizing the risk to landlords and neighbors. “Housing with a pledge” will mean that the housing provider will pledge to cover the rent and utilities costs to the landlord should the tenant not pay them as agreed.

The current bill on housing support counts on the number of contact points for housing, which are meant to aid people with addressing their housing needs, being 115, fewer than the Government’s earlier bill. As submitted, the bill counted on a contact point in each municipality with expanded scope, of which there are 205 in Czechia.

The original bill would have created 352 new jobs and cost CZK 348 million [EUR 13.85 million]. Kulhánek previously said the number of contact points was reduced after negotiations with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS).

The Chamber of Deputies has not yet been able to complete its discussion of the bill because of obstruction from the opposition. Even when Bartoš was still in charge of the MMR, though, the Pirates’ then-coalition partners from the ODS were against the bill.

Bartoš is sharply criticizing the current bill. The Pirates say ODS has “removed the bones” from it.

“If Finance Minister Zbyněk Stanjura and ODS hadn’t blocked it and hadn’t been concerned mainly with the advantageousness of the developer program, we could have been further along by now. I had to negotiate the definition of affordable housing directly with the European Commission because the Finance Ministry has neither the competence nor the know-how to do so. Affordable housing for people is not about advantages for business. For me it has always been and still is important that people be able to live in dignity, not which firms will make money on them,” Bartoš said.

In September 2024, the amendment procedure for the bill was interrupted by the Committee on Public Administration and Regional Development, for instance, because its members said it was necessary to clarify some parts of the bill. It was then reviewed by the Committee on the Economy, which never did adopt a position on it, just as the Committee on the Budget had not.