Paris homeless relocation intensifies ahead of the 2024 Olympics
The French authorities are intensifying efforts to remove homeless people from the streets of Paris. Actions initiated at the beginning of the year are becoming increasingly drastic. Thousands of homeless immigrants are being packed into buses and transported to other cities.
9:07 AM EDT, July 11, 2024
The New York Times described the latest effort to relocate the homeless from Paris ahead of the Olympic Games on Thursday. Immigrants told the newspaper that the authorities brought buses to a squat in an old cement factory.
To all those who decided to board, they were promised accommodation elsewhere. As a result, people were taken and dropped off two hours from Paris. But they ended up back on the streets.
Paris declared war on the homeless back in April of last year. The police and city services cataloged the sites where people lived on the streets. During this cleanup, actions are also being taken to eliminate illegal sex service locations.
Actions in Paris aim to improve the city's image. The Olympic Village, where athletes from around the world will stay, was built in one of the poorest suburbs of Paris. Thousands live in street encampments, shelters, or abandoned buildings.
In the past year, the police and courts have evicted 12,000 people from the city. "We were expelled because of the Olympic Games," said Mohamed Ibrahim from Chad, who was evicted from an abandoned cement factory near the Olympic village. A bus took his group two hours southwest to a town near Orléans.
Paris Olympics. The city has been trying to clear the streets of the homeless for months
Among those relocated are asylum seekers, as well as families and children in challenging situations. Many Poles living on the streets of Paris are among the homeless.
The organization Le Revers de la Medaille, which monitors the relocation of the homeless and represents 90 associations, stated that at least 20,000 housing units are needed across France. In the Ile-de-France region alone, 7,000 units are required to provide a long-term solution to homelessness.
Paul Alauzy, a health monitoring coordinator at Médecins du Monde, accused the authorities of " "social cleansing" against the city's most vulnerable population. "They are hiding the misery under the rug," the activist added.
The authorities have mandated that smaller cities create "temporary reception centers." Some towns, like the 18,000-strong Bruz near Rennes, have protested.
Local officials complain that there is a lack of temporary accommodation places. The government only provided buses without ensuring there would be places to house the people who were transported. Some homeless individuals return to Paris on their own, so this cleanup of the capital proves ineffective in the long run.
