Current Affairs Czech town to ban homeless from 'sitting, leaning, lying' on public facilities

Illustrative photo Many towns in the Czech Republic have small numbers of homeless people, down on their luck, living rough, and begging passers-by for a few crowns to buy alcohol or cigarettes. It’s hardly a novel situation, and one that can be found all over Europe. But one small town, Horní Slavkov in West Bohemia, has had enough.

There are only a dozen or so homeless people in this town of 5,000, but they congregate in several central locations, and – according to the authorities- bother the locals. The town’s mayor Jana Vildumetzová spoke about the problem.

“They sit there, lie there, they even urinate there. Lots of local people are scared to let their children near these places, and older people are afraid. So for this reason we’ve decided to issue a new regulation targeting this group of people. Using the regulation, our local will police will either ask them to move on to other parts of town where they won’t be so visible, or they’ll receive a fine.”

The mayor says the new regulation would explicitly ban sitting, leaning, or lying on curbs, flights of steps, waste bins and patches of grass in those areas of Horní Slavkov where homeless people are known to congregate. She says she has tried in vain to offer them community service, or at least persuade them to find other areas of town to gather in. A ban on consuming alcohol in public also proved inadequate. Hence this proposed new by-law, which would effectively criminalise the act of leaning on a public waste bin. The homeless charity Naděje says that’s simply ridiculous, and will solve nothing. Naděje's director is Ilja Hradecký.

Ilja Hradecký “Personally I find it totally absurd that a town with ten homeless people is incapable of looking after them. That’s just sad, and clearly suggests that they’ve neglected their social policy for too long. In the last two years various projects from the European Social Fund have been announced around the country where towns have been able to build shelters or halfway houses for the homeless. It strikes me as absurd that Horní Slavkov has been unable to look after its social policy.”

Horní Slavkov, however, seems set on repression as a means of solving the problem, and say they will press ahead with the unusual ban. The town’s lawyers are currently ascertaining whether the ban would contravene Czech human rights legislation. If not, it could come into effect within a matter of months.