How soaring rents are quietly pushing the city’s essential workers to the margins
Anna Absolonová’s reporting traces Prague’s housing crisis through the lives of those who keep the city running and reveals how unaffordable rents are reshaping who can afford to live in the Czech capital at all.
At the centre of the piece is a simple but unsettling question: what happens to a city when the people it depends on can no longer live there? Using data analysis produced with the Urban Journalism Network, Absolonová shows that Prague’s housing market is increasingly incompatible with the incomes of “key workers”, namely nurses, carers, teachers, firefighters, police officers, cleaners, whose labour underpins everyday urban life.
She opens with the story of Josefína Linka, a thirty-year-old social worker who helps homeless people secure housing while struggling to afford her own. Despite working full-time, Josefína can only rent a single room in a shared flat, paying around a third of her income for housing. Her situation, the article makes clear, is no longer exceptional. It is becoming the norm.
According to the analysis, market rents in Prague exceed affordability thresholds for most key professions. A commonly cited benchmark is that housing should cost no more than 30 percent of income. Yet nurses, teachers, firefighters, and carers would all exceed this limit renting a modest 50-square-metre apartment. Public space cleaners are hit hardest, often spending closer to half their income on rent. Only doctors and paramedics consistently fall below the affordability line.
Municipal housing, once a partial buffer against market pressures, has shrunk dramatically. Prague had around 100,000 municipal apartments two decades ago; today there are fewer than 30,000. Of these, only about 3,500 are allocated to key workers. While city officials speak of plans to build more rental housing, new construction has lagged demand, and rents in municipal apartments have risen sharply, in some cases doubling since 2021.
The consequences are spatial as well as social, the article reports. Many key workers can only afford very small apartments if they want to keep rent within a third of their income. Larger flats become financially untenable, especially for single parents or those caring for family members.
Absolonová illustrates this through the case of Kristýna Šrajerová, a paramedic whose night shifts made life in a one-room apartment unworkable. She and her husband eventually moved into hospital-provided housing, one of a handful of employer-backed schemes offering more affordable rents to healthcare workers. While these initiatives provide relief for some, they remain limited, and unevenly distributed.
The article also exposes how affordability gaps intersect with gender. Women dominate many key professions, particularly in care, education, and social services, and on average must work more hours than men to cover the same rent. The disparity grows with seniority: female doctors and paramedics face larger pay gaps than their male counterparts, compounding housing stress even at higher salary levels.
The long-term implications are troubling. As Prague’s population is projected to grow by hundreds of thousands by 2050, demand for healthcare, education, and social services will increase. Urban planners warn that without intervention, Prague may face shortages in precisely the professions it needs most.
Prague remains liveable for tourists, investors, and high earners but increasingly hostile to those whose work sustains its social fabric. The question the article leaves hanging is not whether Prague can afford housing for key workers, but whether it can afford a future without them.
The original source article ‘Praha bez učitelů nebo zdravotníků? Kvůli cenám bydlení možná budoucí realita’ by Anna Absolonová was published in Czech in Deník Referendum, on October 28, 2025.
It is available here.
Deník Referendum is a Czech independent online news outlet known for data-driven reporting, investigative journalism, and in-depth analysis on social, political, and economic issues without a paywall and supported by reader donations.
Summary by ZN.
