The City Hall of Prague’s Bechovice plans to build three apartment buildings in Do Panenek Street for rental housing. The mayor of the city district, Ondřej Martan (ODS), told ČTK today that the houses could be completed in 2025 or 2026. The city district recently announced a tender for the elaboration of project documentation, for which it received a subsidy from the municipality. According to the mayor, he should also finance the construction in the future.
“The design work together with obtaining a building permit will take an estimated two to two and a half years. It should be built on land managed by the city district. It would be a maximum of four-storey apartment buildings with 12 to 16 apartments,” said the mayor.
According to a study commissioned by the city district, three identical houses should be complemented by an underground car park. “Housing units should be so-called affordable, ie intended for the preferred state and city professions. However, we definitely exclude social housing for inadaptable citizens,” Martan added.
According to him, the construction should be financed by the municipality in the future, either in the form of a subsidy or direct construction. In recent years, the city has been supporting housing projects in the city districts through the so-called Affordable Housing Development Fund. City Hall receives the money as interest-free loans or subsidies. The municipality usually requires that it be able to use part of the flats itself in exchange for the provision of money. The money goes to the fund from the completed privatization and as interest from the current account. The city invested the initial amount of over a billion crowns into the fund from its own budget.
Prague has been facing a housing crisis in recent years. The municipality has about 7,000 flats, another 23,000 are managed by the city district. They decide on their leases or privatizations themselves. According to an analysis by KPMG from 2018, after 1991, 194,000 flats became the property of Prague, most of which were sold off during privatizations. The goal of the city management is to increase its own housing stock again.
Source: CTK
