Publication details
Waiting for a Home: Bureaucratic Temporality and Municipal Housing Allocation in Brno, Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Municipal housing is often framed as a solution to housing affordability crises, yet in Brno, Czech Republic, a paradox persists: flats are repeatedly offered but remain unallocated, while approximately 2,000 applicants wait in an untransparent queue. How does a system designed for fair allocation become an obstacle to housing provision? And how do applicants experience and navigate prolonged bureaucratic waiting? This study draws on an ethnographic study comprising twelve in-depth interviews with housing applicants and allocation commission members. The analysis examines waiting as a technology of power (Auyero, 2012) how extended temporality shapes applicants into "patients of the state" who must engage in continuous bureaucratic labour: monthly monitoring, attendance at viewings, and navigation of shifting criteria, while receiving little clarity about their chances. The findings complicate narratives of passive waiting. Housing seekers actively negotiate bureaucratic temporality through information sharing and contestation. However, such agency remains constrained by post-socialist housing inequality, where intergenerational wealth transfers have become the primary pathway to homeownership. Those without family resources find themselves trapped between unaffordable markets and bureaucratic limbo. The study contributes to understanding how procedural fairness can paradoxically obstruct access to housing. |