Trafficking in poverty: Residential hotels in Czech city extort their profits from the poorest and most vulnerable
An organization in Plzeň, Czech Republic called Ponton that provides social services has mapped 76 residential hotels there housing more than 6,000 people, most of whom are foreign nationals. Roughly half are refugees from Ukraine and children live in more than two-thirds of the facilities.
Fewer than 13 % of the facilities have rooms with private bathrooms, Viktor Davídek told the Czech News Agency (ČTK). He is leading a city-supported project called the Monitoring Center for Residential Hotels in Plzeň, which started in September 2022 and ends this year.
“Naturally there will be residential hotels here of which we are unaware. That means the numbers are even higher,” Davídek said.
In most cases the residential hotels are owned by Czech firms or individuals. Some residential hotels held by employment agencies are owned by foreign nationals.
The cost per night to stay in such a facility is CZK 227 [EUR 9] on average, while the monthly rate is more than CZK 6,808 [EUR 270]. “Per month, Plzeň’s residential hotels take in more than CZK 35 million [EUR 1.4 million], so annually they take in almost half a billion crowns [EUR 20 million]. However, those estimates are conservative. In the vast majority of such facilities the fee is paid per person so the ‘traffickers in poverty’ can get the most money out of people,” Davídek said.
According to the project manager, the refugee crisis meant that many accommodation providers and employers have come up with new exploitative practices. “They have all but total control over the finances of those housed there, they frequently fine them and charge them other fees once they are tenants, and these people fall into the debt trap because it is more or less impossible to save money while living in a residential hotel,” he said.
The residential hotels are located in business complexes, former hotels and tenements which are frequently dilapidated and in poor repair. As big companies keep looking for more and more new employees, the number of residential hotels keeps rising, most of them now in what originally were apartment buildings.
“For the owners, this is a chance to multiply their income. The usual rent for a two-room apartment is CZK 14,000 [EUR 555]. However, if you put four beds in each room, you can accommodate eight people there, each of whom will pay CZK 7,000-8,000 [EUR 280 – 320] per month,” Davídek said.
Ponton has classified the residential hotels and says the worst are the facilities of last resort, which comprise approximately one-fifth of those monitored. “Those are excluded, frequently, in a geographic sense, located near concrete plants, heating plants, or scrap metal yards where there are high levels of noise, where it’s dusty, the environment is not stimulating for children, to say nothing of the substandard hygiene and frequent fires there,” the specialist said.
Such facilities are inhabited mostly by people for whom there is no other alternative. According to Davídek, while there is a great deal of housing discrimination based on skin color, there is even more discrimination based on the number of children a family has.
Davídek said that for a family with four children it is almost impossible to find regular rental housing in the city. Families pay for the beds in the residential hotels from their welfare, but the housing subsidy does not even cover the whole rent.
According to Davídek, the operators are informed to a great degree about the customers’ incomes and welfare benefits. “In many residential hotels, mainly those of last resort, there are bedbugs, cockroaches, and cardboard instead of window panes,” he said.
Other fees have to be paid in such facilities as well. Almost everywhere a fee is charged to use the washing machines, most often about CZK 50 [EUR 2], but one residential hotel is even charging three times that amount.
Approximately 60 % of the residential hotels are owned by employment agencies and are very easy money for their owners. “If a problem arises, the owner just contacts the agency to resolve it. The agency then either fines or fires ‘its’ person. If a firm leases an entire building or floor in a residential hotel, the owner charges them blanket rates even for the empty rooms,” Davídek said.
People residing in such facilities frequently do not even know how much they are paying for housing because the agency deducts it from their wages. According to Davídek, most factory owners take no interest in where their employees live.
“[Business owners] have contracts with the agencies and leave that responsibility to them. Most firms in the Borská pole [one of the biggest industrial zones in the Czech Republic] are using agency employees,” Davídek said.
Thanks to lobbying by the big enterprises which want new employees, the programs for qualified labor migration run by the Industry and Trade Ministry are expanding, and according to Davídek, ever more third-country [Translator’s Note: non-EU] workers are coming to the Czech Republic. “If a residential hotel were operated by the city, it would have to guarantee a certain level of quality and trafficking in poverty would not transpire – and other costs for public budgets would not arise,” he said.
According to Davídek, the way forward is social housing that has to be supported by cities, municipal departments, regions and the state. In his view, while the ongoing housing crisis is impacting everybody, it is having the most impact on families with children, people living with disabilities, senior citizens and single mothers.
