Faktory úspěšné reintegrace bezdomovců a nástroje bytové politiky pro řešení bezdomovství v ČR =Factors of the Successful Reintegration of the Homeless and Housing Policy Instruments for Addressing Homelessness in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify the main factors that lead to the successful reintegration of the homeless into long-term housing in the postsocialist Czech Republic, identify the barriers to successful reintegration, and, in the light of these factors and barriers, assess the effectiveness of existing and potentially new state housing policies. Homelessness is a fact that has various causes, and the article tries to link the factors behind and barriers to the successful reintegration of the homeless with potential state interventions in the area of housing and housing policy to reinforce the success of reintegration. Although effective housing policy assistance is not the sole precondition for the successful reintegration of homeless people into long-term housing, without such assistance reintegration is not possible. Despite the relative broadness of existing studies of homelessness in the Czech Republic, to date there is none that focuses on this dimension, and analyses the factors behind and barriers to the successful reintegration of the homeless in greater detail and in reference to the effectiveness of assistance from the housing policy sphere. The authors thus also assess existing public assistance to the homeless in the sphere of housing and innovative changes that could be made to this assistance in the form of ‘guaranteed housing’. In order to analyse the factors behind and barriers to the successful reintegration of the homeless into long-term housing the authors draw on fi ndings from their own qualitative survey of social workers and homeless people conducted in the Czech Republic’s three largest cities. Given that housing systems in post-socialist countries followed a similar path of development, the conclusions from this research could be of more general validity and could serve as resource for other post-socialist countries.