The Housing Policy Changes and Housing Expenditures in the Czech Republic

Martin Lux

Part 2

.....No nation-wide random research, focusing only on the area of housing, has been carried out in the Czech Republic so far. However, various attitudes towards the issue of housing and housing policy have been established within the frame of other examinations. One battery of questions, within the frame of nation-wide representative research Religion 1999, dealt with the attitudes of Czech respondents towards the black market with housing and towards the use of flats with state controlled rent by higher income households. ^[1] Generally, it can be said that the absolute majority of respondents adopts a sharply negative attitude towards so called “black renting” of municipal flats and towards “sales of decrees” for assigned municipal flats. Respondents are more tolerant of the issue that a flat with state controlled rent is used by higher income households (Figure 5).

One of the significant factors standing in the background of variation of answers is the respondent’s age. Given situation better suits younger people. It applies to all mentioned questions that there is a statistically important relationship between an answer to a given question and respondent’s age - the higher the respondent’s age the higher his or her dissatisfaction with a given situation was. We have actually noticed the most significant correlation relationship between respondent’s age and the question of regulation; to our surprise this means that especially young people do not mind as much as elderly respondents that a big proportion of controlled rental housing stock is used by higher income households.

In the course of a more detailed classification of the third order it becomes clear that the dependence of age and satisfaction with given situation is for the question of regulation given by the size of respondent’s residence, to a certain degree. The significance of this relationship is high in smaller towns, the bigger the residence size the lower the significance was– it might disappear completely. The relationship between the age and the variable regulation would not be confirmed in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and in Prague.

This situation should have an important impact on the entire future housing policy in the Czech Republic. It is obvious; that a great part of young households in big cities makes use of black renting to solve their temporary complicated housing situation. That is why they do not think it too bad (as it is the case with elderly respondents) to rent out these flats, they are afraid that if this chance disappeared it would not be at all possible to find financially acceptable rent. Similarly, it is certain that many young households, especially from smaller towns, make use of existent system of “inheriting” of decrees from grandparents. This is the cheapest way of solving their housing problem. Considering the fact that these days the incomes of younger households are usually higher than incomes of their parents’ households, it is obvious and common, that these “new tenants” of municipal flats belong to the group of higher income households.

Even though we do not have any support of data, we do not believe that existent system would suit younger respondents. Bearing in mind that in the near future there will probably be no real change leading to a more stable housing market, these people only use actual pathological patterns in a certain natural way. So to speak, once they have used them they also defend them. However, we think that they would not protest to a more fundamental reform of housing policy in the field of rental housing. On the contrary, they could initiate it.  More than 90 % of respondents are against the sale of decrees (answers it is bad and it is really bad) even in the youngest age category (up to 28 years). 74 % of young respondents are against black renting and 53 % of them are not satisfied with the reality that higher income households live in flats with controlled rent. Compared with younger respondents, elderly ones are usually more critical of current economical and social situation in general.

On the other hand, it can be noticed that attitudes towards housing are a very unusual area: in comparison with elderly people, young people in general express "more industrious" attitudes in the field of social policy. They support more targeting kind of social help than non-addressing social benefits, from which profit even higher income households; it seems to be the other way round, to a certain degree, where the issue of housing is concerned. This fact is confirmed by statistic independence of all attitudes mentioned in our battery of answers on respondent’s self-classification on the right-left scale of positional political continuum (!).....