The week of February 8, the extreme cold plan was activated in several departments.
At the weekend in Paris, it was below zero degrees and many homeless people spent those freezing nights outside.
Read also: Housing: help to the homeless still too focused on emergency solutions
In marauding with the Samu social, Thursday February 11, Jean Castex, accompanied by the Minister of Housing, Emmanuelle Wargon, went to meet them to offer them to spend the night in emergency accommodation.
“
Finally one!
He exclaimed when someone accepted the offer.
The Prime Minister had just received two refusals.
According to Emmanuelle Wargon, 614 additional places were open in Paris this week but only 522 were occupied.
Many fears for the homeless
For Perrine Dequecker, communications officer for the L'Aurore association, which accommodates, treats and supports homeless people, there are many reasons for this refusal of accommodation.
First, she evokes the fear for a homeless person of losing his bearings and his “
neighborhood life
” by leaving his usual place of life.
These people have acquired their habits in a neighborhood and can build a social life there with its inhabitants, its shops, its restaurants.
Leaving means "
losing your place in the street, moving your belongings."
It is a transitional solution.
To leave is to lose all they have left,
”she explains.
She also evokes the feeling of strong destabilization that the homeless people most in difficulty and damaged by the street can feel: “
For them, finding themselves between four walls overnight, it can be synonymous with oppression.
We find some people sleeping on the floor rather than in the beds made available to them, so the shock can be severe
”.
In addition, many homeless people fear spending a night in an accommodation center.
High promiscuity, the risk of violence or theft, the refusal to be considered in a situation of distress, the fear of being separated from a pet are all reasons that push some homeless people to refuse aid associations.
Read also: Homeless and poorly housed: associations warn of a "dramatic situation"
For Perrine Dequecker, these fears, if they are justified, are also based on an “
old idea
” according to which emergency accommodation centers are unworthy and unsanitary places.
However, today, she explains that a lot of efforts have been made on this subject by the public authorities: “
Several centers favor single or two-person rooms for sufficiently long periods.
This allows the homeless to reconnect with a social life, to benefit from real support in order to start living an independent life again
”.
Every night, in Île-de-France alone, 100,000 people are accommodated in emergency accommodation centers, the number of refractories remaining relatively low.
A critical lack of space in social housing
To respond to this problem of refusal of accommodation, L'Aurore is committed to working on social links with the homeless.
A key issue, according to its members.
The marauding takes place during the day and the volunteers help the homeless with their health procedures, their administrative matters (RSA, pensions) or to reconnect with their families.
“
It's about convincing them to get help, without forcing them.
Sometimes it's a work of several years,
”says Perrine Dequecker.
In addition, according to the 2020 results of the Nuit de la Solidarité, 62% of homeless people questioned say they have never used 115, the helpline for homeless people.
They explain that, even if they wanted to be accommodated, the number is almost always unreachable and the chances of having a place in a center after a call are very low.
Out of weariness, these people then simply stopped asking for help.
Read also: The Minister of Housing wants the construction of 250,000 social housing units in two years
According to Perrine Dequecker, it is therefore a question of completely rethinking the housing policy rather than offering one-off assistance, in particular to cope with extreme weather conditions.
“
Today, a quarter of places in emergency shelters are occupied by people who have a stable job.
Due to lack of space, they cannot reach social housing and thus free up places for other homeless people,
”she explains.
The Minister of Housing has pledged to build 250,000 social housing units in France by 2022, in order to "
catch up on the backlog in this area
".
A measure that many homeless housing assistance associations consider essential.