The most important amendments to the Act on Housing Care in Assisted Areas, which entered into force on December 23, 2025 (Official Gazette 151/2025), are:
New models of housing care:
– the possibility of buying uninhabitable state-owned apartments – beneficiaries of housing care are no longer limited to renting or donating but can buy uninhabitable state-owned apartments under prescribed conditions.
–donation of building materials for the repair of an apartment in the attic or on the last floor – previously it was not clearly regulated, but now this possibility is included.
An increase in the amount for donating construction materials – from the previous 25% → 50% of the value, due to the increase in the prices of materials and services.
Rent in state-owned apartments – the same rent is being introduced for everyone in the housing care system in assisted areas: €0.36 per m² per month, which corresponds to the “protected rent”.
Extension of rights to additional groups
Housing care for Croatian emigrants and descendants of emigrants – The law now explicitly includes the possibility of housing care for Croatian citizens from the diaspora (and their family members) who return permanently to the Republic of Croatia.
Croatian citizens in BiH – precise procedures for housing care are also prescribed for Croatian citizens living in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Victims of domestic violence
The right can also be exercised on the basis of a non-final judgment – until now it was necessary to wait for a final judgment, which could take a long time.
We will focus on the Amendments to the Act on Housing Care in Assisted Areas, which have reopened an old but never resolved issue – the position of former tenancy right holders. Particularly problematic are the provisions of Articles 48a and 48b, which in practice prove to be discriminatory and contrary to the fundamental constitutional principles of equality before the law.
Although the declarative goal of the Act is to ensure fair and sustainable housing in assisted areas, its application to a specific group of citizens suggests the opposite.
Who are actually the holders of tenancy rights?
Tenancy rights holders are not persons without a legal basis. These are citizens who, based on the laws in force at the time, had a permanent and protected right to use an apartment, often for decades, with investments, payment of rent and utilities, and the creation of a family home.
With the abolition of tenancy rights during the 1990s, these citizens lost one of their fundamental existential rights, and the state has undertaken to compensate for this loss through appropriate housing models and is now declaring the established right null and void.
Namely, with the amendments to the Act on Housing Care in Assisted Areas, former holders of tenancy rights whose right to housing care was formally established – by final and binding Decisions – are now offered a certain amount of money to buy an apartment instead of a real solution. On paper, the state claims that it has fulfilled its obligation. In reality, this is a right without a realistic possibility of realization.
The one-time sums of money provided for the purchase of an apartment do not follow real estate prices on the market, do not take into account inflation, the rise in prices of construction materials or the chronic lack of available apartments, as well as the fact that the real estate market in some areas is practically non-existent, e.g. areas of special state concern/assisted areas. In practice, this means that a person has the “right” to buy an apartment, but for that amount there is no apartment on the market that would make this right real.
With this model, the state effectively shifts its constitutional and legal obligation onto the individual. We must emphasize that former holders of tenancy rights are often elderly people, of poor financial standing, and are not creditworthy.
The assumption is that the legislator has provided former holders of tenancy rights with this model with freedom of choice, i.e. the beneficiaries choose where to buy an apartment, but what kind of choice is that when they do not have enough money, there are no offers, there is no alternative if the purchase fails.
This is not freedom of choice, but a type of coercion through legal standards.
This is also a violation of the principle of real equality because it violates the equal opportunity to exercise rights. When one group is given a sum of money for the market purchase of a housing unit, and others are given long-term security /rent-purchase/, then there is no equality.
This is the definition of discrimination and the state’s abandonment of its own responsibility, and not the definition of housing care for the purpose of the Law itself. If the right to a home is turned into a symbolic amount that cannot even buy square meters, then the housing problem is not solved, the case is only administratively closed.
People who once had a home are now offered an amount for which there is no home, then the Law does not solve the problem – it unfortunately legalizes it.
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