Fight for neighborhood in the Czech Republic continues, Romani residents face third eviction attempt in the last 14 years

The leadership at the local authority says the “Finnish” single-family houses in the neighborhood have become too old, the costs to repair them would be high, and they are counting on new construction there in the future. Residents are being promised substitute housing.

The residents disagree with the arguments made by the leadership of the municipal department and do not believe their promises. “The leadership of the municipal department has endeavored repeatedly to evict the Bedřiška inhabitants in the past and has currently decided to take such a step again. This is the third attempt to break up the community here by deciding to end the residents’ rental contracts,” the spokesperson for the community, Eva Lehotská, told the Czech News Agency (ČTK).

According to Lehotská, during the first two waves of evictions, roughly 90 people left the locality, most of whom ended up in residential hotels. “The municipal department claims the houses are in poor condition, but we disagree. The mayor alleges, for example, that the sewage system is wrong, but the analysis of it is only now being performed, so we believe that is a tendentious claim,” she said.

Lehotská went on to say that while the municipal department is publicly promising to aid the residents with securing new housing, the residents themselves do not believe those promises, based on their previous experiences. “During the current eviction, by 30 September of next year at the very latest, 32 people are supposed to lose their housing, 30 of whom are Romani, including 11 children, and in the second phase another 12 persons will lose their housing by 31 May 2029,” she said.

However, according to Lehotská, the appendices to the rental contracts that the municipal department is now asking the renters to sign with the municipal department stipulate that the contracts can be ended at any time before those deadlines if the landlord says a particular unit is not fit for habitation. The appendix even prohibits tenants from performing routine repairs to the properties.

“The appendix also says that if a water-related accident should occur on the properties, the municipal department will not repair the damage, even though the civil code directly requires such repairs,” Lehotská said. She believes these appendices to the contracts contain many controversial provisions which would push the residents of the neighborhood into precarity.

Nothing in the appendices guarantees the residents will be awarded substitute housing by the municipal department. Lehotská claims the municipality is pressuring the residents to sign the appendices by the end of the month, otherwise they will have to leave the locality when their current rental contracts expire.

“If they sign that appendix, they give up the opportunity to negotiate further, and they also give up any possibility to defend themselves, which we consider quite questionable,” Lehotská noted. The Bedřiška residents have therefore written a letter to the city assembly describing their situation in detail, including the transformation undergone by the locality in recent years.

The residents want to raise the subject at a city assembly meeting. Mayor of the Municipal Department Patrik Hujdus (Independents – Nezávislí) told ČTK that the houses in the neighborhood were built for a temporary period.

“Those days are already gone. We have no ambition to invest more financing into them because reconstructing a house that is too old does not seem economical to us, it’s wasteful. We have analyses confirming that it is more advantageous to raze the houses,” Hujdus said.

The mayor considers the only economically rational solution to be the gradual decline of housing in the locality. “We don’t want to cause a social problem,” he said.

According to Hujdus, the municipal department has designed everything so the residents have an opportunity to prepare themselves to relocate and have enough time to resolve their situations. The appendices to the rental contracts have not been sent by the municipal department to tenants who have open-ended leases.

“We have been reproached with not investing into these houses, but the repair of such a house has been appraised previously as costing up to CZK 2 million [EUR 80,000]. The municipal department’s budget is not unlimited, though. We are borrowing money to repair infrastructure elsewhere, and if we invest into Bedřiška, where so many people live together in a single house or apartment building, to me that seems absolutely not economical. We had to make this unpopular decision,” Hujdus said.

The mayor reiterated that if the tenants uphold their contracts and pay their rents properly and on time, the municipal department is prepared to take care of their substitute housing.

Pirates: Bedřiška is a unique locale serving as an example of good practice in coexistence between the majority society and the Romani minority

Local members of the Pirates are against the evictions and have convened political meetings with Deputy Minister for Regional Affairs Lukáš Černohorský, director of the State Investment Fund Daniel Ryšávka, the Vice-Mayor for Investment in the City of Ostrava, Břetislav Rieger, and the Mayor of the Mariánské hory a Hulváky Municipal Department, Patrik Hujdus. The Pirates consider Bedřiška a unique locale in the Czech Republic that serves as an example of good practice in coexistence between the majority society and the Romani minority. 

“We Pirates have been aiding a resolution to the situation in Bedřiška since 2018, at the city level we supported a study by RE:architekti in 2022 on renewing the houses and revitalizing the entire territory. However, it is necessary to arrange the financing, which is why we convened the meeting,” Vice-Mayor Andrea Hoffmannová (Pirates) said. 

“It bothers us that the leadership of Mariánské hory a Hulváky has repeatedly subjected the residents of Bedřiška to fear of losing their housing. Concluding rental contracts for periods that are no longer than half a year and then pressuring them to sign these appendices is both unprecedented and unacceptable. Unfortunately, we are already accustomed to the fact that the Heimstaden company, which administers about 42,000 apartments in the Moravian-Silesian Region, behaves in such a way, but it is alarming that such practices are also being applied toward vulnerable groups of residents by a local authority,” said regional assembly member Zuzana Klusová, who has many years of experience working with people from socially disadvantaged environments.

The Bedřiška residents are complaining that investment into their houses has long been lacking and that maintenance of the properties is neglected unless there is an accident. “That’s why we filed a motion with the Pirates to investigate the wasteful handling of this real estate. The answer we received was a vague, bureaucratic statement that said nothing and proposed no solution,” Klusová said.  

“The municipal department is exploiting the housing crisis and forcing the tenants into obviously disadvantageous terms, which contravenes the principles of the civil code and established case law,” regional assembly member and attorney Ondřej Ručka said. In 2012, the locality became notorious after an arson attack on a house there occupied by a Romani family.

Residents today say that in the interim, Bedřiška has become a completely different place. Residents repair the houses themselves, improve the surroundings, and properly pay their fees.