Green Party: The Prague City Hall should build at least 1000 housing units per year

Prague - The Prague City Hall should be more active in solving the housing situation. This was stated today at a press conference by the Deputy Mayor for Urban Development Petra Kolínská (Greens/Trojkoalice) and the Greens' candidate for mayor Ondřej Mirovský. According to them, Prague should start building at least a thousand municipal apartments each year and repair and offer to people another thousand that it owns. According to the Greens, the issues of Airbnb, relations between the city and developers, and housing for seniors should also be addressed. The Greens are part of the Trojkoalice, which has governed Prague alongside ANO and ČSSD for the past four years.

Rising prices of apartments and rents are emerging as one of the main pre-election topics in the metropolis. According to Mirovský, it was a mistake for the city to sell most of the housing stock to tenants during privatization. The Greens give Vienna as an example, where the city owns more than a quarter of the housing stock, and 78 percent of residents live in rental apartments with regulated rents. In Prague, this figure is 32 percent.

According to Mirovský, Prague should combine its own construction, better care for the existing stock, and negotiation with developers. For example, in Munich, developers are required by contracts with the city to build necessary infrastructure, such as schools, and to sell 30 percent of the apartments to the city, which offers them to tenants under favorable conditions.

Another issue, according to Mirovský, is short-term rentals through services like Airbnb. The Greens would like to return at least 5,000 apartments currently rented through Airbnb to residential housing by 2022. Other measures that the party wants to implement include creating a rent price map, supporting cooperatives, a grant program for renovating empty homes in private ownership, and supporting senior housing and apartments for the disabled.

Housing is currently overseen by councilor Radek Lacko (ANO), who has been talking about building new apartments in recent years. According to him, Prague aims to build a total of 1,097 apartments in three years. These include apartment buildings in Černý Most, Dolní Počernice, and the conversion of the former Opatov Hotel building in Jižní Město. The projects will cost approximately 2.2 billion crowns, but so far no apartments have been created.

According to Mirovský, the Greens have not managed to reach an agreement with representatives of ANO regarding housing development. While councilor Lacko sees the solution more in larger construction projects, the Greens would prefer to negotiate more with developers and buy apartments from them. This is not the only issue on which the Greens and ANO and ČSSD disagree; in the past, there have been disputes over the completion of the city ring road, traffic calming of the main road, or changes to the zoning plan.

The city currently manages nearly 9,000 apartments, and around 26,000 more are managed by city districts. Based on approved privatizations, the city hall still plans to sell around a thousand apartments. According to the city leadership, no more apartments will be sold, and Prague wants to expand its housing stock. According to an analysis by KPMG, after 1991, 194,000 apartments transitioned into the ownership of Prague, so the stock has decreased to about 18 percent of the original state since then.