Mayor near Brno lives in a municipal flat despite owning a guesthouse

Bendová, mayor of the village of Předklášteří near Brno, has for the past two or three years been renting a 42-square-metre municipal flat, paying just over 5,000 crowns a month — half the market rate for comparable housing. According to the opposition, however, she owns property of her own: a guesthouse that she rents out to tourists.

"When the flat was allocated to the mayor, the council violated the rules for distributing municipal housing. After all, she owns other property — a guesthouse that she rents to tourists," said Antonín Steiskal, leader of the rival movement Our Předklášteří. In his view, the mayor only needs the flat to register a fictitious permanent residence in the village — a status required to run in local elections.

What the mayor says

Bendová confirmed that she rents the municipal flat, but put it down to personal circumstances. "I'm not proud of it, but I was dealing with the situation after my divorce, and at the time there was no private rental housing available in the village. And no one else wanted the municipal flat. We discussed it in the council, and later at a meeting of the councillors," she said.

She explained that since her divorce she has lived outside the village, but uses the municipal flat because of her children, who are in alternating custody, and sometimes stays there overnight because of work commitments. She denies that the rental is a way of keeping her permanent registration: "I still have permanent residence registered in Předklášteří, but not at the municipal flat — at my previous address, where I lived with my ex-husband."

Bendová herself sees the whole affair as political rivalry. She noted that in the 2022 elections Steiskal headed the candidate list but failed to win a council seat, as voters crossed him off the ballot in favour of other candidates.

Reaction from other councillors

Opposition councillor Jaroslav Svoboda of the New Předklášteří movement declined to comment, citing lack of time. The two other opposition councillors could not be reached.

Coalition councillor and former deputy mayor Martin Sedláček of the Klášteráci movement believes the flat was allocated improperly. "I don't think this should happen. When I raised the question, I was told everything was fine and that no one else wanted it. That surprised me, because when I was on the council, there was plenty of demand for municipal flats," Sedláček said. According to Steiskal, there were interested applicants, but they withdrew their applications and reapplied only after the mayor had already been given the flat.

Expert opinion

Political scientist Michal Pink of Masaryk University noted that granting municipal housing to a member of the town hall leadership is not unusual. "It's within the remit of local self-government. Whatever the council approves and the voters tolerate goes through — even if it strikes some people as odd," he explained.

According to the expert, there's no one-size-fits-all rule here — it all depends on the specific case: some mayors formally register in the village they lead while actually living elsewhere, while some council members have run guesthouses or cafés out of municipal buildings, which was perfectly in line with local rules.

Bendová is now serving her second term as mayor, having originally taken the post as a stand-in. "I didn't set out to run the village myself, but I got drawn into it — the work is varied. In the next term I went further, and now we have a lot of projects underway, so it makes sense for me to keep going. It's not calculation. I have ties to the village, part of my family is here, and I'm not the first mayor to serve a municipality she doesn't actually live in — there are quite a few of us," she concluded.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz