Housing and Social Rights
Our goal is to achieve just and equitable laws and their implementation focusing on housing, social rights, regulations on housing by the state and municipalities, access to social allowances, and registration of addresses.
In our earlier “Punitive Municipalities” project we reviewed the decrees of all Budapest district municipalities on rental housing, social support and the ones regulating community life. Through this we exposed how municipalities criminalize certain behaviors, make access to social support unnecessarily or discriminatively difficult, which can have further negative impact on the social and housing situation. Beyond the criticisms, we designed an alternative model decree, in which we formulated the regulations of the imaginary “Free city” on community life in a way that allows the local community to live together based on equality, justice, inclusion and transparency. We distributed the review of the existing municipal decrees and the model decree to several local municipalities.
The goal of our current “TranspaRent” project was to make municipal social housing systems more transparent and just, in cooperation with the municipalities if possible. In Budapest, 23 districts and the Municipality of Budapest have developed their housing policies without cooperating with each other, so there are 24 different regulatory frameworks in force. We examined the decrees and housing application systems of all municipalities and compiled a Problem Map, followed by a Guide for drafting municipal housing regulations. Our aim was to ensure that as many municipalities as possible consider our proposals in their policy. The SLA provided professional assistance in the form of consultations and workshops and it has had cooperation agreements with eight districts in Budapest and also one with the Municipality of Budapest.
We are representing several people before court against an investment company that tripled the rent from one day to the next to push the tenants from their homes. This is not an isolated case, as the SLA's legal aid service has experienced a lot of cases stemming from a regulatory loophole of the Hungarian Tenancy Act. This is why we decided to set up a new project to analyze the problem of the tenancy of people living in previously state-owned flats.
In the run-up to the general elections in 2022, we put together and disseminated to the parties a policy paper on social rights and housing that are essential to be among the first changes made by the new Parliament elected.
In May, we held a legal aid marathon with the participation of 16 lawyers as the moratorium on evictions drew to a close.The number of people asking for legal advice usually increases before the end of the moratorium.
This November, we issued an analysis on the amendment of the Social Act, which will dissolve the last elements of the Hungarian welfare state. We also analyzed the Municipality of Budapest’s strategy on homelessness and the housing decree of District VIII of Budapest.
We are constantly monitoring and making recommendations on social benefits, including pension minimum, which has remained unchanged since 2008, while the cost of living is still increasing.