Czech Supreme Court increases compensation for Romani families evicted from Vsetín in 2006
The Supreme Court has increased the compensation awarded to a Romani family who was forced to move away from the town of Vsetín, Czech Republic in 2006. The judgment follows two other, similar rulings and concerns 14 members of an extended family.
Originally the family members were to receive compensation ranging from CZK 5000 [EUR 200] to CZK 40,000 [EUR 1625] each, but now they will be awarded compensation ranging from CZK 10000 [EUR 400] to CZK 90,000 [EUR 3655]. The highest sum was awarded to a woman who was in an advanced phase of pregnancy at the time of the relocation.
The judgment has been made temporarily available on the official notice board. Vsetín evicted Romani families from an apartment building during the time in office of Mayor Jiří Čunek (Christian Democrats – KDU-ČSL), who has since been re-elected mayor and holds the position today. The building was in poor shape and the town then had it demolished.
The Romani tenants, some of whom had defaulted on their rent prior to their evictions, ended up either in units made out of repurposed shipping containers elsewhere in Vsetín, or were forced to assume loans for the purchase of dilapidated, single-family homes located in a completely different administrative region. The Supreme Court said that the town’s aim had been to resolve the problem that it had with the tenants instead of resolving the tenants’ housing problems.
The family affected by the latest verdict was meant to move into a house in the village of Supíkovice in the Jesenický area. Upon arrival there, however, representatives of the town realized the property was in such poor shape that it was not fit for human habitation.
After spending all day on the bus, the family returned to Vsetín. The town provided the family with temporary housing for roughly 10 days and ultimately moved them into a single-family home in Dřevnovice in the Prostějov area.
That house had just two rooms, a kitchen and fixtures, but it required repairs. The town gave the family an interest-free loan for its purchase, although they had no choice as to whether to assume the loan or not.
The house was foreclosed on all the same before long, though, and was sold at auction. According to the recent verdict, the town essentially manoeuvred the family into the solution it prepared for them, which made their already precarious situation even worse.
The family ended up far from Vsetín in a property they could not afford to repair. “That led to the plaintiffs losing their social contacts with the environment in which they had lived until then and worsened their living conditions,” the Supreme Court ruled.
The court also said the course of their eviction and relocation had violated the family members’ personality rights. It previously handed down two similar verdicts in related cases.
The other verdicts raised the compensation for the children in particular of a Romani family who had to relocate to the village of Vlčice in the Jesenický area. The house was damp; lacked a bathroom, septic tank and sewerage; and was old, with old electrical wiring and an old stove in a single room.
The family did not have the means to repair the house. The father abandoned them and most of the children ended up in institutions.
Another family was relocated to the village of Vidnava in the Jesenický area, also into an old single-family home in poor repair. The compensation now awarded to the individual family members reflects their ages as well as their previous approach to paying rent and their willingness to resolve the situation when they were living in Vsetín.
In all three cases, the Supreme Court cancelled the part of the first-instance judgment regarding the cost of the proceedings. The Regional Court in Ostrava will now review liability for those costs once more.
