The State has not set the "zero homeless objective" on the street in anticipation of the Paris Olympics, said Thursday the prefecture of the Île-de-France region (Prif), which says it wants to unlock "additional places" of emergency accommodation to leave a "social legacy". For several months now, the authorities have been accused by associations of carrying out a "social cleansing" of the Paris region, in order to clear the way before the 2024 Olympic Games (26 July-11 August) by emptying the streets of the Ile-de-France region of its most precarious populations: migrants in camps, workers' hostels, the homeless, sex workers, people living in slums...
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It doesn't make sense, social cleansing," the Prif, which is in charge of emergency housing issues, told a few journalists. "We have not set ourselves the objective of zero homelessness in Paris by August 2024", which is "neither the wish nor the ambition of the city of Paris and the State" and would be "contrary to the dignity of people", stressed the prefecture. "On the other hand, being able to offer quality places to people who are homeless in Paris and keeping them in emergency accommodation, doing in-depth social work, we are working on that and we will try to do better during the Olympic period. But it won't be coercive," the Prif added.
Unlock additional seats
The latter, who recalled that an average of 120,000 people are already being treated each night in the region for emergency accommodation, assured that a reflection was underway to succeed in unlocking "additional places" during the Olympics. "We want to have a social legacy in terms of emergency accommodation, we are working on it," the prefecture said, without putting a figure on this objective.
Several associations and NGOs, which have come together in a collective called "The other side of the coin", have multiplied in recent weeks the arrests and punch actions to denounce a "social cleansing" of the Île-de-France, which according to them has already started, with the eviction of more than 4,000 people from migrant workers' homes as well as the transfer to reception centers in the provinces of migrants, whose camps in the Ile-de-France region were evacuated.