With elections coming up, talk of housing support is starting again. The public mood in the Czech Republic is in favour of state and council housing, but I would urge some restraint. In countries to the west of us, we have seen in recent years how easily people can be evicted from state and council housing and replaced by migrants or other privileged groups.
I am afraid that the issue is not so difficult just because some people make a good living out of it. That it is difficult because it is impossible to solve without at the same time touching on other issues.
The distribution of jobs across the country. It is not possible for hundreds of thousands more people to move to the largest cities without radically reducing the living comfort of existing residents (who will logically resist and organize all sorts of obstruction). And when the market cannot rationally allocate jobs, the government must step in.
Second. As unpleasant and unpopular as it is, there will need to be a distinction between housing and investment housing. This means that there may be different tax and other rules for the first apartment, where the family actually lives, and for the fourth apartment, where the money is put. Even at the cost of the occasional fraudster reporting something differently than it is.
And the most important thing at the end. Only those who want to solve the housing crisis will solve the housing crisis. Not someone for whom it will just be a way to get votes in the next election, and who will be constantly counting likes. Because housing is precisely the area where, whatever you propose that is fundamentally new, there will be an immediate cry that you are restricting someone, that you are like a communist, etc. They would then eventually be all happy when it starts to work, but you don’t build a victory in the next election on that.