Czech Chamber of Deputies passes housing support law, some opposition lawmakers mention "inadaptables" during debate, ex-Regional Development Minister sharply critical

The discussion of the bill in the lower house was preceded by criticism and lengthy debate, among other matters because the aid is limited just to some groups. Use of the term “inadaptables”, which lawmakers abuse as a euphemism for Romani people, played an important role in the discussion too.

The bill was drafted by the Ministry of Regional Development under the previous minister, Ivan Bartoš (Pirates). However, after the Pirates left the coalition government, the bill was transformed.

Bartoš is sharply criticizing those changes. Lawmakers from the governing coalition and the opposition Pirates, 102 total, voted in favor of the legislation.

The coalition was also supported by an unaffiliated lawmaker, Ivo Vondrák, who was originally elected for the Association of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) movement. ANO and the opposition “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) movement voted against the legislation.

The bill was submitted by the Government to lawmakers in the lower house in June 2024. Its discussion involved extensive debate and dispute.

The Senate will now review the proposed legislation. Minister for Regional Development Petr Kulhánek (for the Mayors and Independents – STAN) previously told members of the lower house that there are more than 160,000 people in the Czech Republic immediately at risk of homelessness.

According to Kulhánek, 10 times as many people also have housing problems which could lead to their homelessness. If the law is eventually adopted by the Senate and signed by the President, potentially homeless persons would have an easier time accessing cooperatively-owned, municipally-owned, or privately-owned housing.

More housing units would also be added to the housing system if the bill is signed into law, according to the Minister for Regional Development.

Fewer contact points, support just for some categories of the potentially homeless

If adopted, the law would introduce a network of 115 contact points which would provide advice and aid to persons who have ended up in a difficult housing situation. Originally there were meant to be more than 200 such contact points, but the bill was significantly truncated through Government budget cuts.

The Government presumes 352 new jobs will be created by the law and that it will cost CZK 348 million [EUR 14 million]. The Committee for Public Administration in the lower house lowered the presumed number of contact points to 115.

The contact points will chiefly open in localities where many people are at risk of homelessness and where Labor Offices already exist. Municipalities will be able to decide whether to voluntarily establish a contact point or not.

The system would also offer the opportunity of what is called “guaranteed housing”, i.e., involving private landlords in the system in exchange for guarantees and support from the state. Municipalities would also be able to receive financial contributions for offering their housing units to people in need.

The aid, however, will just be available to households whose incomes are 1.43 times the subsistence level or less, which critics say is too strict and excludes many at-risk groups, including senior citizens, single mothers, and young people aging out of institutional care. Minister Kulhánek’s final words in the lower house debate on the bill rejected the reproaches of opposition lawmakers that the law would be costly.

Kulhánek told the lower house that the state currently spends more than CZK 4 billion [EUR 160 million] on expenditures which are directly or indirectly related to homelessness. In the beginning, the housing support system would cost CZK 1 billion [EUR 40 million] per year, with expenditures increasing in subsequent years to as much as CZK 1.45 billion [EUR 58 million], but as of its fifth year of operation, implementing the law should actually generate income for the state.

Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs: Housing support would be a network of protection against living on the street

Support for adoption of the law was expressed by Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs Lucie Fuková. She said she perceives the passage of the law to have been an important step that could have a concrete impact on the lives of people in difficult housing conditions.

“If it aids the people living in socially excluded localities, then I applaud it! Socially excluded localities are the last stop before living on the street, under a bridge, a life of homelessness,” Fuková said.

The Roma Minority Affairs Commissioner also emphasized that the law should aid all equally and should not be perceived as a measure targeting one group in the population exclusively. “It has long not been the case that just Romani people live in socially excluded localities. Impoverished majority-society people live there too – seniors and single parents,” she reminded the public.

According to Fuková, the law will mainly aid those who currently are in the most need. It should be followed, in her view, by support for other groups in the population who are also at risk of homelessness.

“This is aid to the most needy, next would come assistance for other at-risk groups,” the Roma Minority Affairs Commissioner said.

Ivan Bartoš: The effectiveness of the law is at risk

The law was also strongly criticized by its original author, former Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš. He pointed out that the interventions in the original draft have weakened the law so much that it risks being ineffective.

According to Bartoš, a network of 200 contact points was once prepared, municipalities were interested, and the money for them had been negotiated. “Abolition of almost half the contact centers and the de facto closure of the housing units to risky groups,” is how Bartoš described some of the changes to the bill during the debate, adding that people outside selected regions will not be able to access aid at all.

According to Bartoš, the bill has also lost its wider scope. In its original form it targeted more than one million people.

However, after the adjustments, only those who pass a strict income test will receive aid. According to Bartoš, the overloading of local Labor Offices with this new agenda will also be a barrier to effectiveness.

Rhetoric about “inadaptables” legitimizes prejudices in Parliament

Rhetoric regarding the bill’s target groups significantly entered the parliamentary debate, too. Lawmakers from ANO and SPD repeatedly spoke about so-called “inadaptables”.

While none of those opposition lawmakers ever expressly said that they were speaking of Romani people, the Nazi-era term was being used by them as a euphemism for the Roma. The term serves as a proxy for the Romani population, especially in the context of concerns about the concentration of such persons in certain locales.

One of those who used the term “inadaptable” in relation to the Romani community was lawmaker Berenika Peštová (ANO), who said, for instance, that “one such inadaptable family can destroy the entire entrance [to a housing unit].” She literally said the following: “Those inadaptable citizens started moving out of the regions where they had been having problems. The rest of you were all beautifully improving your cities, starting with Prague, whether it was [the] Žižkov [quarter], whatever it was – so you needed to get rid of those people somehow, and because you had to compensate them for their housing, you slid them on over to the rest of us.”

“I understand that perhaps none of the rest of you have encountered this, because it’s not your case. For instance, when I talk to lawmakers from Moravia, they look at me as if we were actually oppressing these people, that we’re almost racists. That’s not true. We’re not racists, we’re trying to solve problems, but unfortunately, if you have somebody already in the fourth or fifth generation of receiving social benefits, then tell me, how do you want to solve that problem?” Peštová rhetorically asked during another part of the debate.

Other lawmakers said the law would lead to “inadaptables” moving to municipalities with contact points. Experts and human rights organizations have long pointed out that use of the term “inadaptables” is not supported by any expert literature or legal norm.

According to human rights defenders, using that expression during debate in Parliament just legitimizes prejudices and reinforces stereotypes, above all against the Romani minority.

Experts welcome the law but call for a stronger version of it

Adoption of the law was welcomed by the For Housing (Za bydlení) initiative, which brings together academics, non-governmental, non-profit organizations, local authority representatives, and the providers of social services. According to the initiative’s representative, Mikoláš Opletal, this law is important, but the version resulting from the lower house procedure is too compromised.

“We now consider it crucial that the bill passes the remaining part of the approval process before the fall elections. This law is the necessary prerequisite to the systemic setup of functional measures which will both prevent exclusion from standard housing and combat trafficking in poverty,” Opletal said.

According to the Deputy Mayor of Olomouc, Kateřina Dobrozemská (Pirates and ProOlomouc), the law finally gives municipalities a tool to systematically aid people, but it needs broader support and better funding arrangements. “From the perspective of a municipality that is striving for a conceptual solution and, above all, striving to prevent households falling into homelessness, we welcome the result of today’s vote by the Chamber of Deputies. The Czech Republic has long lacked a housing support system that would connect the local level with the national level while also allowing municipalities to build ‘tailor-made’ housing support systems. I believe that both counseling and the guaranteed housing instrument will find their application in every municipality. We need to motivate private landlords to rent unoccupied apartment units,” she said.

Martin Lux, a socioeconomist with the Czech Academy of Sciences and an expert on housing issues, also considers the law’s passage to be the right thing. According to him, the cabinet will be able to change the specific parameters which may not be properly set up in the law as needed.

“This law has been called for since the mid-1990s and although there were several attempts to adopt one before, they all failed. It’s truly a huge success and I’m certain the new legislation will effectively address and prevent acute housing shortage,” Lux said.