The Prague city council postponed the plan to support cooperative housing

Prague - The Prague coalition could not agree on a plan to support cooperative housing using municipal land. After hours of negotiations today, the councilors postponed the proposal for support rules. The proposal calls for the city to provide its land for the construction of an apartment building. To this end, it would find a private partner through a competition, probably a construction cooperative, into which Prague residents would then enter. The cooperative would take a long-term loan and after repaying it, would buy the land from the city hall. Although the council did not approve the plan, it will be discussed by the city councilors on Thursday.

The sale of the land, which would take place in decades, has become a subject of dispute among the coalition parties. According to the original proposal by councilor Hana Kordová Marvanová (STAN), the cooperative was to buy the land at the estimated price, thus without appreciation for the city. The Pirates and Prague Sobě, however, argue that the city does not have unlimited land and should use its help to finance further housing development, meaning it should profit from the sale.

Councilors from the Pirates and Prague Sobě wanted to supplement this in the press today, as well as the impossibility of using city land as collateral. In the end, they could not agree with Marvanová on this, and the councilor withdrew the proposal. "I am very sorry that our coalition partners did not identify with Hana Kordová Marvanová’s visions of how to kickstart affordable cooperative housing in Prague. The approval of the project is currently being postponed, and we are wasting time,” commented Jiří Pospíšil, chairman of the United Forces for Prague club (TOP 09 and STAN).

The plan was originally supposed to be approved by the city council on Thursday as a coalition proposal; according to earlier statements from Marvanová, the city had already begun searching for land suitable for this type of project. After today’s meeting, Marvanová said she would present the proposal to the councilors despite the council not agreeing on it. "I believe it has a chance to gain support from the councilors, and it would be a shame if it fell through the cracks now,” she said.

Representatives of the city hall recently presented a similar plan being prepared mainly by the chairman of the housing committee Petr Zelenka (Prague Sobě). The principle is to be essentially the same as in the case of cooperative housing, only instead of cooperatives, civic associations established for this purpose will build on municipal land, known in Germany as baugruppe. The advantage is said to be the ability to utilize smaller plots of land, and the form of the association is also supposed to allow greater freedom in setting conditions, according to Zelenka. This plan has not yet been discussed by the councilors.

Prague has been struggling with a housing crisis and high housing prices in recent years. According to a study by the consulting firm Deloitte, the average price of new apartments in Prague reached 115,700 crowns per square meter by the end of April. Rents are similarly high, averaging over 300 crowns per square meter in the metropolis.