Analysis of the development of the legislative framework supporting the return of homeless people to housing
Abstract
The article responds to the question of how Czech public policy and the respective administrative authorities are prepared to support the return of homeless persons to housing. It focuses mainly on the dynamics of the development of a formal institutional framework in the form of two key pieces of legislation.
While the Act on Social Services has been in force since 2007 and has undergone numerous amendments, the Act on Social Housing has not yet been enacted. The theory of actor-centred institutionalism has allowed us to conclude that no type of social service whose primary competence concerns social assistance for homeless persons or their return to a standard life has yet been incorporated into the Act on Social Services.
The adoption of the Social Housing Act has encountered both stiff opposition from municipal representatives and a lack of clarity with respect to the competencies of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the Ministry for Regional Development. The Czech public administration may therefore benefit from an amendment to the Act on Municipalities aimed at explicitly defining responsibility for housing in general and social housing in particular.