Bohumín

In Bohumín, the situation is different. The town is near Ostrava and is in a region where unemployment is among the highest in the Czech Republic. A building called “A Hotel House” (which has since been rebuilt) was mainly inhabited by Roma families in 2005. Most of them were rent-defaulters and unemployed. Because the city of Bohumín, together with the owner of the building, did not extend a rent contract, these families were forced to “go to the street” or find help from their relatives. “This was something like a precedent to what happened in Vsetin and now the city may do it again,” says Kumar Vishwanathan, who runs an NGO helping disadvantaged people to deal with the system. Bohumín officials did not comment about this.