Housing affordability in cities in the Czech Republic

While the full effects of the COVID-19 crisis on housing affordability in cities in the Czech Republic remain to be seen, the pandemic has reinforced the urgency of tackling pre-existing challenges, such as a consistent shortage of housing supply in cities and structural obstacles for urban households to access affordable housing. While the Czech national government has taken a number of emergency measures to help people keep their homes during the COVID-19 crisis, this report recommends that Czech national and local governments need to implement both direct and indirect policy instruments more effectively to shape a more sustainable and inclusive urban paradigm. Direct policy instruments consist in targeting housing affordability specifically, for example by providing more social housing to households most in need. Indirect instruments such as local land-use planning can help increase the supply of affordable housing. This report also contains the results from an innovative survey that the OECD and the Ministry of Regional Development conducted on more than 1 800 municipalities to collect data on the housing market and housing policies at the municipal level.