Housing Standards 2002/03: Financial Affordability and Attitudes towards Housing

5. Introduction to the housing of socially endangered groups of the population

Conclusion

Using available data sets (2001 Family Budget Survey and 2001 Social Situation of Households Survey) it was proven that the households of pensioners, young people, single parents, households with one economically active member and households of the unemployed are truly the main groups endangered by insufficient access to adequate housing. Although in most cases these households have some housing (otherwise, we would not have been able to capture them in these statistics), they represent a large group of people to whom efficient assistance leading, especially, to an increased financial affordability of housing should be directed. In addition, we proved that households of pensioners often live in flats that are inappropriate in view of the current housing standards due to a missing or shared basic facilities (their own kitchen, bathroom, flushable toilet, hot flowing water, central heating). It well may be that efficient instruments combining object-oriented support with the support for concrete groups of the population will be designed with the goal of helping to improve the housing standard of these households.

Young people and households of seniors more often mention problems related to the surrounding environment in which they live than problems concerning the shape of the flat/building in which they live. Households of pensioners are generally more satisfied on both counts compared to young people (the shape of the flat/building and the surrounding environment); the main problems declared by the two groups differ dramatically. For households of pensioners the most frequently declared problem was the bad technical shape of the flat/building in which they lived while among young people the most pressing problem was the insufficient size of the occupied flat or house.

When evaluating the question what financial burden housing costs represent for a household it came out that, surprisingly, households of pensioners do not assess their housing cost burden as negatively compared to other social groups as could be expected. Clearly, it was proven that with an increasing age of the head of the household, the frequency of households for whom housing costs are a great burden falls. Among households with a head of a higher age there is also a significantly smaller percentage of households who were not able to timely pay the liabilities related to the use of the flat/ building in which they live. In this case, this may be due to both the unwillingness to admit to having debts and better payment discipline among people of higher age.

It came out from our description of the housing policies addressed to the groups of population endangered with insufficient access to housing at the local level of three selected cities - Prague, Brno and Ostrava - that non-profit organisations, civil associations, church foundations and charities offer a significant portion of services to the homeless or to people who are not, due to various reasons, able to ensure housing using their own resources. In view of the fact that contributions from the state and local budgets are the main source of income of these organisations, a stable flow of funding is a necessary precondition for a successful development of the activities of these organisations. A reasonable degree of centralisation, definition of long-term binding strategy of housing development in a city and an intense co-operation between municipal boroughs and asylum shelter staff proved to be the main factors of efficient housing policy implemented in Brno; a community care housing announced by the Brno magistrate can also serve as a good example of a project aimed at integrating ethnic minorities into larger society.