CZECH SOCIETY FOR HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Aim of Activities

The member base is formed by specialist of various professions (economists, sociologists, jurists, demographers, builders, technologists, urban planners and others).

The activity of CSHD is based on active looking out for possibilities of co-operation with government, as well as with non-government institutions, universities, foundations, research institutes including foreign institutions dealing with housing issues. For example, CSHD was in July 2002 accepted as a member of European Network for Housing Research in Gävle (Sweden).

The Czech Society for Housing Development is not associated with any interest groups and does not present any proposals with their consent. The society enables, that documents concerning the issues its members are dealing with, are negotiated at special meetings, workshops, and round tables, arranged by CSHD, and delivered also to the addressee. The public is regularly informed about these disputes, for instance by publishing adversary opinions.

The Czech Society for Housing Development is interested to continue to play a role of a catalyst for needed discussions. It takes especially care that its members submit proposals objective and open-minded, on a high professional level.

Up-to-Date Subjects of CSHD Activities

   CSHD initiates looking to answers on following topics:
- Definition of principles of housing policy and development strategy, relations to demography, sociology and to
   settlement network linked to housing
- Housing statistics, especially analyses of housing construction by statistical records, inclusive of special surveys
- Housing legislation, especially tenant-landlord regulations and ownership of dwellings
- Social aspects of housing, especially affordability of dwellings for households with low and average incomes and for    various socio-economic categories of households
- Role of the government, regions and municipalities in housing development, financing of housing construction and care    of the existing housing stock
- Role of housing co-operatives during transitional period, non-profit housing societies and their role in the housing    policy
- Technical-economical issues of housing construction, scope of the construction and reconstruction, types of    dwellings, financing housing construction including the reconstruction
- Practical experience with application of the housing policy in towns
- Experiences with application of the governmental, regional and local housing policy in countries with advanced market    economy and in transitive countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

   As examples of CSHD activities it may be named:
- Importance of housing needs prognoses, methods of their evaluation, their application in housing policy of the    government, regions and towns
- Assessment of affordability of various housing forms to main social population groups and assessment of conception    of the state role in housing market
- Forms of financing and subsidising housing construction and care of the existing housing stock
- Application of the non-profit rental housing and ways of transformation of housing co- operatives
- Enforcement of the unrestrained contractual relations and the necessary measures for protection of tenants, including    protection of the housing stock
- Issues of rent regulation and its links to other spheres of social life
- Enhancement of declarative level of housing development and housing construction statistics
- Issues of municipal housing policy, programmes of housing development

Application of Experiences and Publicity

An integrate part of society activity is also acquisition of experience from varied especially neighbouring countries and information exchange on various levels of bodies pursuing housing policy. It is first all of very relevant to use experience from towns, in which problems of practical feasibility of concepts are concentrated. One of the CSHD functions consists in organising special meetings to the above noted topics and to surmount the isolation between central consideration and the practical reaction to the adopted or intended measures.

With respect to the experience gained by execution of housing transition, the CSHD activity takes attention to improvement of publicity and explanation with aim to enhance activity, especially of the young generation, by solving housing affordability in its particular forms (tenant and owners housing).