ALMOST 40 percent of the inhabitants of Slovakia live in overcrowded dwellings, according to a Eurostat survey of housing conditions across the EU conducted in 2009.
The average proportion of people living in overcrowded dwellings across the EU was 18 percent. Overcrowding is judged according to the relationship between the number of persons in a household and the number of rooms in each dwelling. In 2009, the share of persons living in an overcrowded dwelling ranged widely between member states, from 1 percent in Cyprus and 2 percent in the Netherlands, to 58 percent in Latvia and 55 percent in Romania and Hungary.
A person is considered to be living in an overcrowded dwelling if the household does not have at its disposal a minimum number of rooms equal to: one room for the household; one room per couple in the household; one room for each single person aged 18 or older; one room per pair of single people of the same gender between 12 and 17 years of age; one room for each single person between 12 and 17 years of age and not included in the previous category; one room per pair of children under 12 years of age.
According to the survey, half of Slovaks live in flats, while 48.5 percent live in detached houses and only 1.4 percent live in semi-detached houses.
