Access to decent housing for people from marginalized Roma communities

Quality of housing conditions for marginalized Roma communities (MRC) is among the most burning social issues in Slovakia.
Social enterprise DOM.ov aims to overcome this challenge and targets social and financial barriers of people from MRC to finance, build and own their own house. With the involvement of local municipalities, DOM.ov guides people through the process of saving, accessing financial resources through the mortgage, purchasing land and building and owning their new house. The design of houses is unified and low cost. The houses are built by the families themselves under the supervision and guidance of construction experts employed by DOM.ov.
The aim is to activate the whole family and a wider community, and alongside the specific family/individual housing condition improvement, to increase individuals' skills, which may help them succeed in the labour market. Many individuals involved in the program subsequently applied for a job in the construction sector. The intense social work strongly supports the work with individual families. DOM.ov represents successful intersectoral cooperation; it is initiated by organizations from the NGOs sector, strongly supported by a commercial bank (Slovenska sporitelna, member of the ERSTE group) which provides people with mortgages and local municipalities, which are crucial in the process of accessing the land for building houses and legal recognition of the constructed houses.