An Analysis of Housing Policy Measures Aimed at Supporting Labour Flexibility in the Czech Republic

The potential housing-policy instruments that could be used to encourage Czech citizens to move for job opportunities - attitudes of the respondents participating on the focus groups

Relatively surprisingly the respondents in all the focus groups - both respondents who have moved for job and unemployed people who never have - agreed that a strong public incentive that would make people more inclined to re-locate for employment would be more if they were able to obtain information from the employment bureaus about housing offers (opportunities) in the potential new job location. Among the main reasons behind this interest is the poor quality of services provided by real estate agencies and the lack of transparency in the real estate market, the large number of dubious offers or the amount of housing offers that are part of the black market. Another important form of assistance in the view of respondents would be the provision of public, interest-free loans to cover the cost of the deposit ("key money") in new accommodation and the rent that must be paid in advance, as well as eliminating the condition that if the first new employment does not work out for a person they have to register again at the employment bureau in the location of their official permanent residence. There is no consensus on the issue of rent deregulation or direct state subsidies for housing construction: unemployed respondents do not see the significance of deregulation measures for greater job mobility, while people who are more mobile see rent deregulation as an important means of encouraging greater job mobility in the population.

Many of the respondents in the focus groups made the point that an effort should be made for jobs to be located closer to people than is common today, as for most people a daily commute is a much more feasible proposition than moving the entire household. This is a serious point considering the contemporary nature of state incentives designed to attract foreign investment, and considering the employee structure, for example, looking at the car factory employees of TPCA (mostly people who have migrated from regions with high unemployment). It is surprising that the state offers such substantial support to the construction of an assembly-line plant, which has no need for employees that are highly skilled, in a location close to a large metropolis, where there is clearly no surplus of the kind of labour they need. Finally, an interesting finding drawn from the specific example of one household with an unemployed member is that the current "young newlyweds" loans that the state provided to young married couples so that they could purchase their own housing may be counter-productive from the perspective of labour mobility; most mobile Prague respondents agreed that these loans hinder rather than encourage job migration.