Most mornings, seemingly oblivious to the scores of commuters filing out of the station, destitute men and women go about their daily routines, visiting with one another, arguing, haggling over cigarettes, drinking unidentifiable liquids from plastic bottles, comparing stories.

The scene is not an unusual one.

It's been almost eight months since Prague was beset by a stretch of arctic temperatures so cold that it endangered many in its homeless population. At that point, a massive, costly tent city was erected in Letná Park for 23 days to give people warm places to stay, but City Hall since then has done little to correct the fact that the city still lacks homeless shelters. With winter around the corner, there are still not enough beds for those who need them, social workers say.

Earlier this month, the Naděje day center for the homeless adjacent to Hlavní nádraží on Bolzanova street, which provided food, medical services and onsite social workers, shut its doors after serving the downtown homeless for more than 13 years. The building's new owners sold the property after restitution to a company with other plans for the space.

"It's not so bad now, while it's still warm out," says Ladislav Varga, who ran the center. "I just hope that the new center [around the corner] will be finished before winter sets in."

Winter crisis

The Letná tent city, in place last January and February, had capacity for 700 homeless in heated shelters and cost the city some 912,000 Kč ($40,623) to maintain. Will the situation be any different this time around?

Not likely, city officials tell The Prague Post.

Anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 homeless people live in Prague, according to City Hall estimates. The total number of beds in shelters still hovers around 580.

"The capacity is clearly insufficient," City Hall spokesman Jiří Wolf says. "The city would need at least 1,500 beds in shelters plus 300 to 400 more in the winter."

In spite of the shortage, and last year's experience, City Hall isn't planning any major new housing solutions for this winter.

"Was the tent city really such a bad solution?" asks Wolf. "It's a realistic response in an emergency scenario."

In the face of a shelter shortage, day centers like Naděje play an especially important role, social workers say. They're often the first place homeless people head for after a night spent riding on trams or sleeping in parks like the one near the main train station.

The city promises to build a new day center in October on the site of a parking lot that sits underneath a highway overpass just around the corner from Bolzanova.

The two-story building is expected to cost around 10 million Kč, with 25 percent picked up by City Hall and the remaining cost covered by the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. The building would make use of pre-fabricated cells, which should speed up construction, according to Wolf. The actual building should thus take only around six weeks to complete, officials say.

But the city hasn't even granted a building permit yet, and Naděje still hasn't signed a contract with the construction company that will be doing the work.

As the city's homeless population grows — some estimate that it has at least doubled in the past 10 years — so does the need for day centers.

According to Petra Lakatošová, director of the Prague network of Naděje centers, the number of yearly visits to the organization's 13 Prague branches has increased nearly 7,000 between 2001 and 2005.

A lot of ill will

More centers are needed, but getting approval from the various city districts to build new centers is always a problem, Lakatošová says. "We always encounter a lot of ill will from the different town halls," she says.

The new center that is to replace the Naděje near the main train station is no exception. At first, Prague 1 didn't even want to hear about it. "The solution shouldn't be permanent," says Prague 1 spokesman Jan Šlajs. "We would have wanted the center to function in that location for no longer than five years, but City Hall is planning on 20 years."

Filip Dvořák, a Prague 1 councilman, says building more homeless centers in Prague's downtown is generally a bad idea. "When it comes to the shelters and day centers, there is no reason why they should have to be in the city's historical center, near Prague's most popular tourist attractions."

But Lakatošová says moving services for the homeless to the outskirts wouldn't solve anything.

"It's a mistake to think homeless centers in Prague's downtown bring more homeless people there," says Lakatošová. "These people are here already. And the service always has to follow the client, not the other way around."