Homeless people could face imprisonment under far-right government’s legislation.\u00a0A constitutional amendment which bans people from living in public areas has come into force in Hungary, despite criticism from campaigners.\u00a0The revision hands police the power to issue warnings to anyone seen living\u00a0on the streets.\u00a0Penalties for homeless people who receive four warnings within 90 days include jail time or up to six months in a public works programme.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The seventh amendment to the Basic Law, as Hungary\u2019s constitution is now called, was passed by legislators in June.<\/p>\n
As well as the crackdown on homeless people, the\u00a0amendment includes articles which greatly limit\u00a0the chances of refugees receiving asylum.<\/p>\n
The amendment is also meant to\u00a0protect Hungary\u2019s Christian culture<\/p>\n
Advocates for the homeless say the ban and the threat of jail time for violators are unlikely to solve the issue of rough sleeping, especially when many of those on the streets need medical and psychological care most shelters can\u2019t provide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere already have been several unsuccessful attempts for the current homeless care system to absorb those living in the streets,\u201d Zoltan\u00a0Aknai, director of Shelter Foundation,\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, authorities are trying to achieve this with tougher measures.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hungarian government says 9,800 places are available nationwide in shelters for overnight stays and 19,000 in total.<\/p>\n
It has recently\u00a0allocated 9.1bn forints (\u00a325m) to help the homeless. Unofficial estimates say Budapest\u2019s homeless population is as high as 30,000 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are preparing to provide extra assistance to all those living in the streets,\u201d\u00a0Bence\u00a0Retvari,\u00a0Ministry of Human Resources state secretary,\u00a0said about government efforts before winter arrives.<\/p>\n
Jutka Lakatos, who shares a hut in an industrial area with her husband, told the\u00a0Associated Press\u00a0that she hoped the amendment would not be enforced strictly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trust that after an initial enthusiasm, they will acknowledge that it is totally pointless and nothing will come of it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Homeless people could face imprisonment under far-right government’s legislation.\u00a0A constitutional amendment which bans people from living in public areas has come into force in Hungary, despite criticism from campaigners.\u00a0The revision hands police the power to issue warnings to anyone seen living\u00a0on the streets.\u00a0Penalties for homeless people who receive four warnings within 90 days include jail time or up to six… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-2455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-hungary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2456,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions\/2456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}