OUR DEMANDS
Housing is a basic human right according to Czech, European and international standards and should therefore be guaranteed to all. The current situation favours the interests of landlords, developers, speculators and poverty traders. However, we do not want housing to be a commodity and an object of speculation. We want a world where everyone can live in dignity, and this is only possible if the power imbalance between tenants and landlords is redressed.
As tenants, we demand:
1. Better legal protection for tenants and an end to repeated short-term contracts
Granting leases for a year or just a few months is a common practice in the Czech Republic. This causes a power imbalance in favour of landlords. Although we are not forced to sign such contracts, we often have no choice, because almost no one offers long-term or indefinite contracts. Tenants with short-term contracts are thus forced to live in insecurity. That is why we are calling for new legislation to end the practice of repeated short-term contracts. We are also calling for the automatic renewal of short-term contracts for an indefinite period, unless there is a breach of the contract during its term. At the same time, we propose an economic advantage (e.g. in the form of a tax break) for landlords who grant indefinite contracts.
2. Regulating rental housing prices according to clear rules
Rents are regulated in some form in 13 EU countries. In the Czech Republic, rents for short-term contracts are determined according to data provided by private real estate agencies. For them, housing is a business and therefore they seek the highest return. For permanent contracts, there is a regulation – a maximum increase of 20% over three years. However, such an increase does not correspond to the growth in real incomes of tenants. Moreover, this regulation does not apply at all to the most common type of contract – fixed-term contracts.
The price of rent must be set by democratic bodies, not by real estate agencies. It must reflect the real economic situation of the population (e.g. real wage growth). Another possibility is that the rent price is defined by an index or price maps that take into account the quality of the apartment and its location, while ensuring that people from different economic classes can live in each neighbourhood. The rent price must be linked to the property, not to the tenancy, which means that the landlord cannot increase the rent after a change of tenant. We can take inspiration from the requirements of the Scottish Living Rent movement.
3. Progressive taxation of unused and investment flats
While for most of us, houses mean housing and a home, for others, the more affluent classes, they mean an opportunity to make money quickly and easily – and at the expense of the rest of us. Indeed, investment buying and property speculation is one of the main causes of housing unaffordability.
That is why we are calling for a progressive property tax to ensure that renting out dozens of flats for profit ceases to be an attractive business opportunity. As cities are spread over a limited area, the number of flats that remain empty due to speculation cannot be ignored – in such cases, owners need to be incentivised with a special tax for non-occupation. The funds thus returned to public budgets should be used mainly to support housing (expansion of urban housing stock, energy efficiency improvements in buildings, housing allowance).
4. Enforcement of laws restricting short-term rentals
Short-term tourist rentals are also one of the causes of the housing crisis. Thousands of apartments offered on AirBnB and other platforms serve as a source of profit, while local tenants cannot even find a room at an affordable price!
The operation of accommodation services in premises intended for long-term housing contravenes a number of Czech laws. Enforcement of these laws by the responsible authorities should ensure that the apartments continue to be used for long-term housing and not for the tourism business.
5. Establishment of tenants’ unions and involvement of tenants in decision-making processes in apartments and houses
Rental housing is an unstable and precarious position for many of us today, and as such does not allow the establishment of a bond to our living space and a real sense of home and community. We believe that this plight can be improved by involving people more in the democratic processes of decision-making about the city.
First and foremost, we call for legislation recognising tenants’ unions as organizations analogous to employee unions, with similar opportunities and protections. Organising in such structures would enable people living in rented accommodation to negotiate housing conditions with landlords from a position of strength and thus achieve better financial conditions and housing quality and stability. At the national level, it would then be possible to negotiate favourable legislative changes, subsidy programmes, etc.
The ability to attend unit owners’ association meetings and housing association meetings and to co-determine issues concerning the building should also be enshrined as a tenant’s right, as all such decisions directly affect the quality of housing.
6. State and local government support for non-commercial forms of housing
One of the processes causing high housing prices is the ‘commodification’ of housing – the process of housing becoming a commodity. Thus, housing ceases to fulfil its basic function – providing security and stability of a roof over one’s head – and instead becomes an object of sale and purchase, a business related to poverty and speculation.
To make housing more affordable, the process of commodification needs to be stopped, and state and municipal support for various non-market forms of housing needs to be provided. This can be cooperative, state or municipal housing and various forms of community ownership. Examples of such projects in the Czech Republic include the solidarity housing network Sdílené domy (Shared Houses) or the Mietshäuser Syndikat (Rental house trade union) in Germany. Socially just renovation projects for disused buildings should not be forgotten. These projects must not put low-income groups at risk of being evicted under the pretext of improving urban space and the consequent rise in housing prices. A project in Utrecht offers an example of a mix of affordable, social and market housing.
7. Local authorities need to rethink the role of developers and start looking after the needs of citizens
Currently, commercial developers build apartments for investment instead of providing housing. Local authorities often play into their hands just to tick the ‘more housing built’ box, regardless of whether such housing is affordable for citizens and regardless of whether there are associated urban amenities.
Cities should stand up for their residents instead of helping developers increase profits. Local governments should play a leadership role, not a servant role. They should ensure that megalomaniacal projects are not realised if they subsequently lack amenities and cause a burden for both new tenants and old residents. The provision of a proportion of flats for social housing and/or at regulated rents must also be a condition of any new development project. In addition, no development project should displace the original tenants, and if evictions have to take place (e.g. due to technical conditions) then tenants should be provided with decent replacement housing of at least the same quality.
Inspiration can be drawn from the German city of Ulm, where developers are obliged to provide 40% of each new housing development in accordance with the terms of the state’s public support programme for social and affordable housing for at least 25 years.
8. Intervention against discrimination and unlawful conduct by landlords against ethnic minorities, foreigners and otherwise disadvantaged groups of tenants
Despite the existence of an anti-discrimination law in the Czech legislation, some groups of tenants are at a greater disadvantage than others when looking for rental housing. Some groups are often prevented from renting an apartment simply because of their ethnic origin. Foreigners are often taken advantage of because of their ignorance of the Czech legislation and their lack of orientation on the domestic housing market. They are thus offered contracts that contain points that violate Czech laws, contracts with absurdly high rental prices or contracts that combine both of these problems together. We are therefore calling for strict compliance with and enforcement of all laws affecting rental housing and for higher penalties for breaking them. Czech legislation must ensure that landlords who offer rental contracts in breach of the law are punished.
9. Create a housing ombudsman and establish housing contact points in all municipalities
Even today, the problems of tenants remain largely outside the attention of the political class, both at the municipal and national level. This in turn reduces the capacity of public policies to respond to current difficulties. We therefore call for the government to establish a Housing Ombudsman. This should be an institution to which not only tenants can refer their problems, but also where case studies are recorded together with other data, which could then be used at all political levels to develop measures improving the availability and quality of housing.
Housing contact points are already an established practice in many places, but they should be available throughout the country – for all municipalities (in the case of small municipalities, this service would then be provided from the municipality with extended competence, within a voluntary association, local action group, etc.). The contact centres would be open to anyone with any housing problem, including particularly disadvantaged groups (see previous point), would provide advice on how to solve problems and would mediate contact with different levels of government so that these issues do not remain invisible.
10. Tackling energy poverty and providing energy efficient housing for all tenants
Even before the energy crisis, hundreds of thousands of households could not afford to heat their homes adequately. With the rapid rise in energy prices, the number of people in energy poverty has risen to almost one million. It is tenants who are most at risk of energy poverty. This is because they are unable to make savings, replace windows or change the heating source in their rented accommodation themselves. Landlords are usually reluctant to invest in repairs to their flats and houses because they do not bear the energy costs themselves. If renovations do take place, they often lead to rent increases, and energy savings thus make the plight of people in rented housing worse instead of better.
With the planned mandatory European standards, this trend may get even worse. We need to change this and, through a well-thought-out regulatory and subsidy policy, not only motivate landlords to make energy savings, but also ensure that tenants are protected from arbitrary rent increases and, conversely, direct investment in renovations to help those who need it most – i.e. primarily people in rented housing.
We therefore demand that the law should impose rent regulation according to the energy efficiency of the house. It must not be possible to charge arbitrary rents for uninsulated houses with old windows and inefficient heating; the price must be low enough for the tenant to be able to afford the high energy costs. This regulation would further incentivise landlords to make energy savings, for which they can receive government subsidies. These should be made conditional on an open-ended contract with the rent fixed at a maximum of inflation so that the cost of renovation is not passed on to the tenants.
11. Simplification of rent subsidies
Financial support for people in rented housing is an essential part of liberalised housing markets – where there is a lack of regulation, rent prices tend to be disconnected from people’s income levels. However, financial support instruments are still needed even in more regulated markets, as their function is also to protect tenants in financial distress from losing their housing.
In the Czech environment, this support takes the form of a housing allowance and a housing supplement (příspěvek a doplatek na bydlení). However, the current system is overburdened by complex bureaucracy, understaffed offices and often mistrust of applicants, making support unavailable for many people.
Access to support should be linked to more general, clearly documentable criteria (e.g. student status, parenthood, long-term illness, senior age, etc.), while in other cases only the minimum necessary documents should be required to obtain support. Combined with measures to improve housing affordability, market regulation and a reduction in bureaucratic costs, the system could thus become significantly more efficient.
Nevertheless, the priority should be to create a system that ensures affordable housing for all without the need to create additional measures burdening the state budget. As of now, budget resources go into the pockets of private landlords instead of serving those who really need them.