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Description
The aim of the project is to advance system approach to homelessness in the CR, approved by key stakeholders. 83 000 people including 20 000 children live in acute housing need in the county. In 2019 we developed a complex homelessness legislation in a coalition of experts, and now we plan to present it in the parliament. Our strategy includes coalition building (MPs, local politicians, experts and interest groups), works with the vocal opponents (repressive cities), and provides legal, media and analytic support. If the complex bill fails we will advocate piece by piece.
Summary of project results
For over two decades, efforts to pass a law on social housing or any other systemic comprehensive legal measure in the Czech Republic to address housing need and its prevention have been unsuccessful. There is a lack of tools and methodological support for municipalities that wish to address growing housing need and housing shortage. The state and municipalities do not even have sufficient knowledge of the extent of the problem due to absence of its mapping. In the past, comprehensive legislation was not successfully passed because legislative proposals were formulated "from the desk" and did not sufficiently address the issues faced by municipalities, which blocked the proposals.
This project helped to tackle the lack of knowledge on the effective ways of addressing housing shortages through intense awareness-raising and communication work, among the key stakeholders, including politicians and other decision-makers. It also succeeded to bring credible data and analysis of the situation and to medialise those. The initiative “Za bydlení” became a respected actor and “a reference point” within the field of the prevention and solution of housing need in the Czech Republic. At the same time, it enabled civil society organizations to build an open multisectoral initiative across CSO, academia, social services providers and local authorities to get sufficient capacity for advocacy, including the development of their own legislative proposal and red lines of working legislation, which became “a carrier” for the current proposal of the in-line ministries - Ministry for Regional Development and Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
At the end of the project, the common proposal of the in-line ministries - Ministry for Regional Development and Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs - was discussed at the Legislative Council of the Government. It was believed that during spring 2024, the proposal should be approved by the Government and then discussed within the Parliament of the Czech Republic. We believe that we and other actors who are aware of the unsustainability of the situation, if the relevant legislation is not approved in the current election period, will succeed not only to support that the Act enters into force, but also in the most meaningful form.
If this happens, after decades of absence of protection for the most vulnerable households, the Czech Republic will have a piece of law that will enable the systematic introduction of prevention and solutions to exclusion from standard housing and will enable the anchoring of functioning (and already proven) tools in the gradual start-up of this area, such as contact points for housing, assistance in housing and housing with guarantees (by NGOs or municipalities).
Whether it will be possible to prevent and actively solve the housing crisis in any municipality in the Czech Republic will no longer depend on an ad hoc (political) decision and
the will of the current communal government and purely (unsustainable) project financing from EU funds. The law will introduce (mandatory) financing of support in housing.
No less important is the introduction of systematic mapping the development of the housing shortage in the Czech Republic, which is foreseen by the Act.