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PM: Gov’t may help towns tear down dilapidated houses

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Usti nad Labem, North Bohemia, July 20 (CTK) – The Czech Regional Development Ministry will prepare a programme of help to the municipalities with the demolition of their dilapidated houses, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) told journalists while on a visit to the region yesterday.
“The demolition of the structures is a partial contribution to settling the situation in socially excluded localities,” Sobotka said.
The regional authority has estimated the sum that may be needed for the demolition at roughly 250 million crowns.
Sobotka said there were two alternatives of the help. Either European funds or only state money may be used, he added.
“It seems that the European money can only be used if a form of social housing were built on the given site,” Sobotka said.
“If we want to implement a programme purely for the demolition, which I consider very useful, we will have to spend our own money,” he added.
The ministry is supposed to present its proposals and conditions of the state help at a government meeting that is scheduled to be held in the Usti Region in the latter half of September, Sobotka said.
The municipalities must own the houses and contribute financially to the demolition, he added.
The programme of the help would probably cover the houses whose demolition would be substantially cheaper than reconstruction, regional governor Oldrich Bubenicek (Communists, KSCM) said.
“Unfortunately, they are in most of the towns,” he added.
If the programme is approved, Maticni Street in Usti nad Labem will be one of the first eligible sites, Bubenicek said.
The street drew public attention in 1999 when the authorities built a fence there to separate the owners of private homes from the residents of rental flats, mainly Romany rent defaulters, on the other side of Maticni Street.
The residents of the flats protested against the fence, along with Czech and foreign human rights advocates who viewed it as discrimination against the Romany minority.
The concrete fence was built over the noise and disorder produced by the unadaptable tenants of the rental flats.
Bubenicek cited other similar sites such as the Janov neighbourhood in Litvinov, the Chanov housing project in Most and the Predlice district in Usti nad Labem.
($1=24.843 crowns)

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