KSČM to focus on housing in local election campaign

Prague, July 28 (CTK) - Housing will be one of the crucial topics of the Czech Communist Party's (KSCM) campaign ahead of the autumn local elections, KSCM shadow local development minister Frantisek Benes told reporters yesterday.

The Communists support regulation of housing costs and want to introduce the level of "adequate rent" and a project of building low-cost flats, Benes added.

Rents have considerably increased mainly in big cities in the past few years, along with unemployment rate caused by the economic crisis, which threatens medium- and low-income inhabitants, the KSCM says.

This is why the party has prepared the law on rent and its contracting that will be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, said KSCM deputy Milada Halikova.

However the law has no chance of being passed in the 200-seat lower house where the centre-right government parties command a comfortable majority of 118 votes and the left wing opposition, the KSCM and the Social Democrats (CSSD), have the rest.

The KSCM legislation uses the expression "adequate rent," which means that a rent can be up to 20 percent higher than housing costs in flats owned by cooperatives or associations of owners in the locality.

Halikova criticised the coalition agreement of the government parties, the Civic Democrats (ODS), TOP 09 and Public Affairs (VV), which almost did not deal with housing.

The Communists would also like to halt the gradual deregulation of rents this year.

Under the law on rent deregulation, municipalities and other real estate owners have the possibility to gradually increase regulated rents in their flats.

In the capital of Prague, where the flat prices and rents are the highest, there are still 160,000 flats with regulated rents. A half of them are owned by municipalities and the other half by private owners.