This is a spectacular operation with an aim that could not be more banal: to ensure that 107 families have, in this week of school year, a roof over their heads.
To point the finger at the precariousness of these couples with uprooted children or single mothers, Utopia 56, an association to help migrants, pitched a hundred tents in front of the Paris Town Hall overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
Inside, families “exiled and living on the streets”.
A way, for the association, to highlight the "unworthy situation" of these people who arrived on French soil, "after a month of alerts to the services of the town hall of Paris and the prefecture of Ile-de -France remained unanswered ”.
Tonight, 107 homeless families took their seats in front of the Paris town hall.
@Anne_Hidalgo @IanBrossat You've been alerted for 1 month, now what are you going to do?
pic.twitter.com/Uh1cr6FIBR
- Utopia 56 (@ Utopia_56) August 31, 2020
"Since the start of 2020, 667 families have requested our association for accommodation, i.e. 1,642 people including 185 children under three years old," says the association, which emphasizes that following the dismantling of the camps d'Aubervilliers at the end of last July, 15 new families approached her.
"A deliberate political will to make
their situation
invisible
"
"Due to the lack of open places in the common law systems, this figure continues to increase until it reached 145 families during the last two weeks of August, that is to say 361 people including 147 children, with among them 56 of less than 3 years" , according to Utopia 56. In reaction, the structure claims to have "sent nearly 30 e-mails to the institutions responsible for protecting these families, without any solution being offered to them".
It is to put an end to this inertia that a hundred tents have been set up in front of one of the symbols of the capital.
Because, according to the association of aid to exiles, "every night, the police forces (are) deployed to dislodge the families installed in tents and push them out of Paris, in a deliberate political will to make
their
families
invisible.
situation.
The message is therefore clear: shift the problem instead of solving it ”.
Meanwhile, in front of the Paris City Hall: 209 people, 59 children, 17 under 3, 15 pregnant women.
Welcome to Paris @ Utopia_56 pic.twitter.com/q68BLwDRvD
- Noemie SAIDI-COTTIER (@Noemie_S_C) August 31, 2020
Utopia 56 thus calls for "an increase in the number of places in accommodation systems and an overhaul of the reception of new arrivals".
The government, through the Minister of Housing, Emmanuelle Wargon, said Thursday that it wanted to increase the total number of permanent accommodation places to 166,000 throughout France.
And, according to the mayor of Paris, 7,000 places have been created in the capital over the past six years.
