Prague establishes special group to remove homeless people from mass transit

Mayor of Prague Tomáš Hudeček (TOP 09) has told journalists that the city has decided to eject homeless people from public transportation and has set up a special team to solve the problem comprised of representatives of municipal police, nonprofit organizations and the transit authority. "They have been jointly tasked with improving the situation in mass transit environments, including their cleanliness," Hudeček said.

For the time being it is not yet clear how the city exactly intends to remove homeless people from public transportation or how much the entire action will cost. Prague also does not yet know how it will induce homeless people to bathe.

Hudeček said there must be a balance between repressive measures for homeless people not to travel by mass transit and motivations for them to visit social centers to bathe and change into clean clothes. "It won’t be cheap, but our position is that this is socio-pathological phenomenon which should have been resolved long ago," the mayor said. 

The working group is now supposed to elaborate a plan and say how many police patrols and street workers will be needed and how specifically they are to go about this task. For now the only thing that is clear is that more municipal police will be on duty in mass transit environments.

Should police detain a homeless person on mass transit, they would call a street worker to the scene to start resolving the problem. "It definitely will not be the case that these people immediately disappear from mass transit. After speaking with representatives of nonprofits and the transit authority, I believe it would be a big success to reduce their presence by 20 – 30 %," Hudeček said, adding that he hoped the measures would start being implemented this winter.