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

The attitudes towards potential housing-policy instruments that could be used to encourage Czech citizens to move for job opportunities

A questionnaire survey conducted on a sample of unemployed people in Opava, qualitative focus group discussions in Prague and Opava, and the "CVVM 2006" all also looked at potential housing-policy instruments that could be used to encourage Czech citizens to move for job opportunities. An experiment that would clearly lie outside the limits of accepted ethics in sociological research could not be used for this, so in order to obtain the most reliable results as possible, the effect of public incentives aimed at changing public attitudes towards migrating for work was studied with the help of an acceptable "trick" in the questionnaire surveys. Respondents were first generally asked whether they would move for employment if they found themselves unemployed, even at the price of having to search for new housing, and then in one of the following questions this question was repeated, but this time respondents were offered the option of obtaining a very generous (and essentially improbable) housing policy incentive - they would be offered a rental flat with regulated rent (a rent level lower than the market rate) in the area of the new job location that would correspond in size to the respondent's current household. The response to this generous incentive was significant: the percentage of respondents willing to move for work increased by 7 percentage points among the unemployed in Opava and by 9.5 percentage points among all economically active Czech citizens questioned in the "CVVM 2006", increases that are by no means negligible.

However, a closer analysis of the data from both surveys showed that, under the current socio-political, cultural, and other circumstances, those who react more to this housing policy incentive, and likely also to other similar incentives, are those economically active respondents who are already more willing than others to move for jobs, even without any incentives to do so. The people whose response to this very generous public housing policy incentive is to change their initially negative stance on moving to a positive view tend to be people who are young, dissatisfied with their current housing, single, independent, childless, characterised by a more open lifestyle, with a sense of responsibility for taking care of themselves, and who want to do creative, interesting work and are more flexible about job aspects in general. In other words, this kind of important and relatively generous housing policy incentive still evokes a more significant response from that segment of the Czech population (or the segment of the unemployed) that even without incentives already exhibits a greater willingness to move for employment, but for some reason shows a hesitancy to move. Although, given this method of questioning, the above finding must be taken with some reservations, still, the introduction of public support in the area of housing policy, even the more costly forms, would evidently only benefit that part of the Czech population that is more mobile today even without such incentives (supports), i.e. the part of the population that would sooner or later probably move for employment anyway, though this form of support may in some cases represent the final necessary "push" to get them to do so. This conclusion was also confirmed by findings from the individual focus groups, from the case studies conducted in the industrial zone of Kolín-Ovčáry, and from an analysis of recommended public housing policy incentives made by the respondents themselves in the "CVVM 2006".

Certainly, if the state or municipality were able to guarantee anyone who wished to move for job reasons rental housing at favourable price terms then there would be an increase in the amount of migration of Czech households; but, as the quantitative surveys revealed, under the current circumstances the increase would for the most part involve the group of people who are already relatively the most mobile. This supports the conclusion that housing constitutes just one of an entire web of factors that influence people's labour mobility. It is, however, equally clear - and particularly the respondents participating in the focus groups in Prague exhibited an awareness of this - that in this day and age it is unrealistic to expect the state to play this kind of role, as it would most certainly lead to the waste and abuse of public resources. The resultant positive effect of major public intervention would be far outweighed by the cost of this measure (including the potential cost of misuse), which would have to be covered out of the public budget, and most likely over the long term.

This sad reality is substantiated by the conclusion in the case studies conducted in the industrial zone of Kolín-Ovčáry, where the state (or by extension the municipality) provided support for the construction of new flats for employees of the TPCA (Toyota - Peugeot - Citroen Automobile) car factory. The average public subsidy per dwelling unit built (or reconstructed), including infrastructure subsidies, was to be 900,000 CZK, according to initial estimates, but the cost ultimately ran to around 1,030,000 CZK per dwelling, even though the land for the construction of flats had been donated at no cost by the municipality. The absolute majority of the flats that have now been built have a very small floor area - 86% of them are one-bedroom flats. Despite the fact that there was a high subsidy attached to each flat, that the land for the housing was acquired at no cost, and that the newly built and state-supported flats are very small in size, the monthly housing costs of the factory employees who were allocated use of the flats are still high (at around 7,000 CZK for a one-bedroom flat). The offer of a new flat is an incentive that appears to (the sociological survey in Kolín was obviously not representative) appeal mainly to young single people (with the exception of some young families with children), people with a more responsible outlook on life, people who want the kind of work in which they can gain practice and acquire new experiences, and people who have not yet had their own housing - in other words, people who possess the characteristics of the more mobile part of the Czech population. The high housing costs in the new flats contribute in part to a high turnover of tenants, and the high expenditures on housing also contribute to the turnover of employees at the factory. Even today 11% of the completed flats are used as a kind of "dormitory", i.e. for housing a larger number of employees in one flat, and there is a real fear that there will be little interest in the rest of the newly built flats and many of them will be used in a similar manner, that is, as employee "dormitories". The usefulness of public subsidies in this case is obviously questionable: the effect it leads to is that commercial dormitories or hostels for factory employees are squeezed out of providing this service and replaced with housing offered in expensively state- and municipality-subsidised "company dormitories", which actually end up housing what is already the most mobile part of the Czech population. Meanwhile, as the "CVVM 2006" (see details further) shows, these more expensive forms of public support in the area of housing policy are the forms that Czech citizens recommend least, and, unlike other forms of incentives, they are recommended significantly more by those people who are economically inactive and for whom they are not intended anyway. The question is then why the state, unless it is absolutely necessary, creates such costly but ultimately ineffective (i.e. leading to other than the expected results) forms of public support, which the public is least interested in anyway?