Abstract
Housing is one of the basic human needs. At the same time, however, housing is also a tradable good and as such is subject to the fickleness of the market.
Over time, it has become more or less affordable for almost all economic strata of society, only to suddenly become a relatively scarce investment whose profit and maintenance depend on substantial economic capital. From the point of view of law, however, it is not only a mere commodity, but also a prerequisite for the effective fulfilment of guaranteed human rights such as the right to dignity, the right to privacy or the right to respect for family life.
The right to housing has thus become part of what are known as social rights, rights that are closely linked to the development of the welfare state, whose role is particularly relevant when the market fails, and which define the social guarantees of the dignity of human existence provided by the state. It has found a place in a number of international human rights documents adopted in the second half of the 20th century, often in response to the tragic experience of the Second World War.
In the Czech public sphere, it has recently come to the fore, especially in the context of the deepening housing crisis in our housing market. It has increasingly been addressed by authorities such as UN rapporteur Leilani Ferha or former ombudsman Anna Šabatová as a right that exists de jure but is no longer fulfilled de facto by the state, or at least not sufficiently.
The primary aim of this thesis is thus to focus on what guarantees of protection of the right to housing are provided by the Czech legal order. In this context, the focus of the thesis is on the Czech constitutional order, the relevant case law of the Constitutional Court and the existing mechanisms of social security law that are supposed to (at least hypothetically) facilitate the availability of housing.
It also includes an analysis of the approach of the European Union institutions, which have dealt with housing protection in their work on several occasions on the basis of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, including mapping under which rights and in what context it has been subsumed in given cases. Furthermore, it aims to examine which international legal documents ratified by the Czech Republic enshrine the right to housing, in what form, and to what extent the Czech courts take into account the obligations arising from them.
The paper also includes a critical assessment of the Czech approach to the protection of the right to housing.