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Lux M., P. Sunega, T. Kostelecký, D. Čermák 2003

Housing Standards 2002/03
Financial Affordability and Attitudes to Housing

Prague: Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The publication Housing Standards 2002/03: Financial Affordability and Attitudes to Housing, authored by Ing. Mgr. Martin Lux, Ing. Petr Sunega, RNDr. Tomáš Kostelecký, CSc. and Mgr. Daniel Čermák, has been put together in the framework of the Housing Standards of Czech Households and Potential of its Growth in view of the Experience of Developed Countries of the European Union project (registration No. 403/03/0417) funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. It is one of three studies to be published between 2003 and 2005 (i.e., in the course of the grant project) under the title Housing Standards. The goal of the publication is to serve as source material for scholarly and analytical work and research as well as to address the widest possible spectrum of those responsible for the formulation and implementation of housing policy in the Czech Republic, and thus to contribute to much needed changes that would lead to the greater efficiency of public expenditures for housing and the improvement of housing conditions for all Czech citizens.

When preparing the content of the study, the authors found inspiration in the publication Housing Finance Review published in Great Britain, but the present authors have paid more attention to the description of the social aspects of housing than the economic aspects. The publication is divided into two basic parts: an analytical part and a module part. The analytical part offers deeper scientific analyses of a wide range of housing issues. Contributions in the module part consist of statistical overviews with commentaries; these contributions aim at collecting and putting into perspective data acquired from various resources. The module part will be updated annually, but unlike the analytical part the structure of the content will not change much.

This year the analytical part of the study concentrates primarily on the issue of the financial affordability of housing and housing costs in the context of general consumer expenditures of Czech households, and on popular attitudes toward financial affordability and housing policy in general. In addition to these two issues, which form the core of the analytical part, the publication also contains a chapter comparing municipal housing policy in the Czech Republic with selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe; a chapter dedicated to an analysis of the effectiveness of central housing policy in the Czech Republic; and an introduction to the issue of housing of socially marginalised groups of the population (here the authors include, for example, pensioners and young people, the Roma population, the homeless, immigrants etc.). This year the contributions are more descriptive in nature; next year the study should offer the results of simulations involving selected combinations of major housing policy instruments and a concrete recommendation supported by sound scientific arguments.

The module part of the publication has been divided into eight parts. The first part places in a wider context the (macro)economic developments in the Czech Republic and their impact on housing, especially on housing construction, changes in real estate prices and interest rates of housing acquisition credits etc. The following two chapters have been prepared using the results of the 2001 Census, and provide a basic examination of the structure of the housing stock in individual counties (the results are presented in the form of cartograms) through the lens of various social aspects of housing. Furthermore, the relationships between housing prices, volumes of housing construction and state housing subsidies are shown according to a regional classification. In view of the fact that demographic development is one of the significant factors bearing on housing consumption, a short chapter is also dedicated to major demographic changes that occurred in the Czech Republic at the beginning of the 1990s. Another chapter of the module part provides information about groups of the population potentially threatened by housing problems (the issue of co-habitation of households in one flat, households of economically inactive pensioners, single-parent families with children, households of singles living in rental flats, recipients of the housing allowance) and their percentage representations in individual counties of the Czech Republic. Also mentioned are changes in the structure of the household expenditures of individual social groups of households in the 1990s, especially in view of the increase in housing costs. The last two chapters present basic data concerning the construction savings schemes (Bausparkasse) and mortgage financing.

In preparing the study the authors have used a wide range of data sources, in particular data from the 1990 - 2001 Family Budget Surveys and 2001 Social Situation of Households Survey conducted by the Czech Statistical Office (Český statistický úřad, ČSÚ), and data from the 2001 Housing Attitudes Survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Other sources of important data used in the analytical part or directly presented in the module part include: the Czech Statistical Office, the Czech Banking Association, the Association of Czech Building Savings Banks, the Association for Real Estate Market Development, the Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic, the Research Institute of Labour and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic, the Institute of Territorial Development, the Magistrate of the Capital City of Prague, the Magistrate of the City of Brno, and the Institute of Regional Development.

High-level representatives of various interest groups and professional associations, ministries, local self-administration and selected researchers of the housing issue were invited to a round table discussion on 30 October 2003 to discuss the results published in Housing Standards 2002/03: Financial Affordability and Attitudes to Housing. The goal of the round table was not limited to presenting the publication; emphasis was also placed on establishing a common platform that could become the starting point for more efficient co-operation among the parties involved.

Excerpt from the publication