The Prague City Hall will allocate 171.5 million crowns for apartments in city districts

Prague - The Prague City Hall approved subsidies for seven projects of city districts focused on building new apartments for affordable housing. The funds come from a special fund, currently amounting to 171.5 million crowns. This was stated to ČTK today by the councilor for health and housing Radek Lacko (ANO). In addition, Prague intends to use the fund, which currently has more than three billion crowns, to finance the construction of its own apartment buildings.

The municipalities want to offer the newly acquired apartments mostly to seniors or people in difficult life situations. "So far, it concerns 118 apartments, which is certainly not a final number. The renovation process is ongoing; some apartments have already been successfully handed over and occupied," said the councilor about the subsidies for the city districts to ČTK.

For example, Prague 8 renovated 43 apartments last year from a subsidy of 20 million crowns. The City Hall also contributed to Prague 12, which is renovating a building on Modřanská Street, where 22 small apartments will be created. In Satalice, Prague 9 wants to convert a former farm into apartments.

Prague 15 will receive 35 million for a new apartment building in Hostivař and for the modernization and expansion of existing residential buildings. In Horní Počernice, they plan to expand a building with care services, and Prague 7 will receive 37 million for the renovation of a dilapidated building in Letná.

The City Hall is also planning new housing. This year, it should start with three projects that will offer about a thousand apartments. These are apartment buildings in Černý Most, Dolní Počernice, and the reconstruction of the former Opatov hotel in Jižní Město. The projects will cost about 2.2 billion crowns. In addition, the City Hall previously selected 12 plots suitable for similar projects.

The City Hall manages nearly 9,000 apartments, while approximately 26,000 are managed by city districts. Based on approved privatizations, the City Hall still expects to sell off about a thousand apartments. Others will no longer be sold according to the city’s management, and Prague wants to expand its housing fund, just like the majority of municipalities. According to a KPMG analysis from the year before last, after 1991, 194,000 apartments passed into the ownership of Prague, thus the fund has decreased to approximately 18 percent of its original state since then.