Prague, Oct 9 (CTK) – The structure of the homeless population in the Czech Republic has shifted over the past ten years to include young people and families with children, with the majority of homeless being in the Moravia-Silesia Region, Lidove noviny (LN) daily wrote on Monday.
This trend was already captured by the Czech Statistical Office’s (CSU) census in 2011, in which a total of 11,496 people said they were homeless of whom more than a half were aged 15-44.
According to the latest estimate of the Czech Labour and Social Affairs Ministry based on its 2016 poll, however, there are more than 68,000 living without home, including those living in asylum houses, flophouses and prisoners prior release. The majority of people without home, almost 14,000, live in the Moravia-Silesia Region, north Moravia, followed by Prague with 9,531 homeless people.
Among the people surviving outdoors or in flophouses, 75 to 80 percent are men, Petr Haban, the ministry’s spokesman, said.
Haban admitted that the numbers of the homeless have been increasing, saying this is linked to the fact that more and more people are not entitled to pension.
More than half of the homeless have completed secondary education and 3 percent of them have university education.
Debts, drugs and alcohol abuse are the main causes of the loss of home, LN says.
“These things are connected to being homeless, just as impaired or ruined family relationships, children’s homes, release from prison, illnesses, injuries and health impairments,” Ilja Hradecky of Nadeje charity organisation said.
Experts say the situation of young people in institutional care who just turned adult or 18 is the worst. Approximately 1,000 people leave children’s homes annually, but only one in ten becomes independent.
According to Nadeje’s 2013 poll among its clients, one third of them were raised by some type of institution, of whom almost a half were under 26.
“One third of our clients are people under the age of 30, which is a marked change, compared to the situation ten years ago,” Dzemal Gerbani of Pilsen’s St Francis Home charity said.
The Czech cabinet has adopted a concept on homelessness outlining preventative measures until 2020 in four stages. The first one is the prevention of loss of home through allowances and debt consultancy, while the second stage is finding a more suitable accommodation, the third stage is the provision of asylum housing and flophouses and the fourth satge are facilities offering alternatives for more permanent living, such as social housing or assisted living residencies, LN writes.
