With the collapse – due to strong selling out policy - of state maintained social housing sector these worst off people soon found themselves in a trap of poverty. One of the most excluded group in the city were the people who lacked housing right and were occupying flats without authorization, and thus were facing permanent risk of forced evacuation.

The report gives a short introduction to the labour market and housing policy changes during the first ten years of the democratic governments in Hungary. The space for action of the Municipality of Pécs was restricted by the overall labour market and housing policies of the Hungarian governments during the 1990. The report also gives a short example of the fact that political affiliation creates and changes policy action both at national, local and also at non-governmental level.

Having presented the circumstances, the report gives an overview about how the Municipality of Pécs and also of many NGOs were able to work in these policy conditions and forge initiatives and projects for employability and housing for the most excluded citizens of Pécs.

Unemployed people living in substandard housing conditions are trapped in poverty. They easily loose their faith and motivation and are hard-to-reach, and as a consequence are left out from labour market programmes. The city of Pecs joined the labour market and housing policies to reach these people, connecting labour market programmes to their own housing environment.

City Government has started many pilot projects to reintegrate segregated, mainly ethnic minority people, through labour market participation projects while trying to give human form to some of the worst settlements in the city. The initiatives were aiming these people but also included other roma ethnic people who lacked permanent employment and were on the waiting list for city maintained social housing.
The city government used joined forces to employ both labour market and housing policies to these people. The city government together with some other dozen public enterprises and authorities has founded a secondary employment agency in 1996. The agency – Pecs-Baranyaert Tranzit Foglalkoztatasi Kht – during the coming 4 years has initiated 28 different projects, and worked with more than 2500 people out of whom 400 has managed to return to the primary labour market.

One of the initiatives the city government has been involved with included to give sitting – however unauthorized – tenants the right to stay in their flats as far as they were willing to cooperate, mainly through working rehabilitation programmes, which involved the renovation of their own flats too.

The project aimed the most excluded, unemployed people in the city of Pécs, who were living in sub-standard housing, sometimes even as arbitrary tenants. Majority of the excluded were coming from the different roma minorities.

Some of the programmes were the adaptation of other EU15 Member State programmes or were financed through international aid organisations.

Municipality of Pécs
Hungary
http://www.eokik.hu/english/staff/EN_zolnay_janos.html
Mr János Zolnay

01/01/1996

case

Urban Policy > Housing > Housing management

Tenant management