Cash in hand on the street: Canadian-inspired project giving direct financial aid to Prague’s homeless
New Leaf Czechia is a new project that aims to help the country’s homeless people with large, one-time financial donations. Inspired by a Canadian scheme of the same name, the Czech non-profit organisation Neposeda believes that these payments will not only allow the people involved to turn a new leaf, but also save the state money in future.
Neposeda, a Czech charity that has been working with children, teenagers, senior citizens and families for over twenty-three years, is trialling a new scheme intended to help the homeless. Taking inspiration from the successful Canadian New Leaf Project that operated in the Vancouver area, New Leaf Czechia follows the same principle that direct cash transfers offer “choice, control and purchasing power at a critical time in people’s lives” and a chance to start over.
Forty individuals in Prague have been chosen as the initial participants. They had to pass certain criteria to receive the financial hand-out of 100,000 CZK: they must be Czech citizens; their life on the street must not have been longer than two and a half years; and they must not have any substance-abuse problems. The participants’ ages range from 19 to 84 years old.
As well as making a big difference to individual lives, the philosophy behind the project is that paying a large amount of money now will save the public purse a lot more in the long run. Jana Hamplová, the director of Neposeda, estimates that the annual savings will be in the ten of millions.
“Currently, it works that we pay homeless people for social services, health services, shelters, sometimes we give them food or a sleeping bag. But this help does not lead to getting those people off the streets. It only prolongs their life on the street and makes it a little easier. As a bonus, we pay some of them a so-called benefit in material need, which amounts to an average of three thousand crowns per month. I don’t know about you, but if I found myself on the street and got three thousand crowns, I'd go buy a bottle too. Do you know how much this dysfunctional help has already cost us? It's in the billions.”
The Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is financing the project, but Neposeda are also seeking “social investors” in New Leaf Czechia. Ms. Hamplová emphasises that financially supporting the project is not a donation, but rather an investment in an individual life and a better society. Estimates of homelessness in Czechia in 2021 were between twenty and thirty thousand people, much of it going unseen by the general public, as part of the modern phenomenon of ‘hidden homelessness’, in which people consistently couch-surf or live in hostels.
The success of the project will be evaluated in a year’s time. In Canada, the original scheme has been very successful. Savings for homeless shelters alone amounted to 186,000 CZK per person. The homeless individuals spent ninety-nine fewer days on the street, paid for stable housing and managed to save up to 26,000 CZK each. There was no noted increase in their spending on alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. A team of researchers, social workers and film-makers will be in regular contact with the participants of New Leaf Czechia, to monitor their progress and see how the money has affected their lives.
