According to Unicef, the number of children without accommodation in France has increased since January 2022, estimating that there are 1,600 living on the streets or in makeshift shelters. A most precarious situation, which has prevented some from returning to school.
[Mise à jour du 2 septembre à 12h14] While the start of the school year is in full swing, it is happening in harsh conditions – or even has not even taken place – for more than a thousand minors. The reason ? They live on the street, or in makeshift shelters, for lack of accommodation, available hotel nights and/or an efficient emergency call number.
Lack of places, 115 unavailable
In a column published on August 30, 2022 in Releasethe president of Unicef France, Adeline Hazan and Pascal Brice, in charge of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), make the edifying observation of the increase in children living on the streets. “An unacceptable and unworthy reality in France” they denounce, which leads some children to experience a complicated back to school, or even to drop out. Precisely, they are 1658 to endure these difficult living conditions. On the night of August 22, the FAS was thus able to quantify the number of children without healthy and safe accommodation, based on the number of calls from families with children made to the 115 (the accommodation emergency number), and who could not be relocated. The lack of places, or their incompatibility with the structure of the family are one of the main reasons for these unresolved requests, but not only.
If Paris, the North and Seine-Saint-Denis are the departments in which there are the most cases, the few 1658 families on the street are certainly more numerous, due to a emergency number malfunction. Indeed, this accounting is only due to the outcome of the call from families to 115, yet the line seems very often deserted by its operators. In short, no one answers, despite incessant calls from desperate families, reports France 24.
#Back to School : almost twice as many children without an accommodation solution compared to the beginning of the year, due to a lack of available places.
Our street children barometer published in partnership with @UNICEF_EN is available here https://t.co/4vjqJGz070
— Federation of solidarity actors (@FedeSolidarite) September 1, 2022
77% increase in street children between January and the start of the school year
In figures, the phenomenon translates as follows: since January, the figures for poor housing for children have increased by 77% according to Unicef and the FAS. And among the 1658 children on the street in this new school year, 368 children under three years old. At Utopia 56, which organizes citizen accommodation, there were 44 children, including 13 babies under the age of one, among the families they cared for the night alone from August 31 to September 1. Stressed children, at the start of the school year, at the idea of saying that they had no home.
The hotel is the main accommodation solution offered to homeless children and families. However, the hotel is unsuited to family life and does not meet the basic needs of the 29,157 children who currently live there.
– UNICEF France (@UNICEF_france) September 1, 2022
“France, by ratifying the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, is committed to ensuring their fundamental rights, in particular their right to development, protection, health and education.“recalls Unicef France, concerned to see the increase in figures listing children on the street, including some 200 unaccompanied foreign minors.”Despite the unprecedented means mobilized to sustain 200,000 accommodation places and which must be kept at least, the situation remains very worrying” say Adeline Hazan and Pascal Brice, calling on the President of the Republic to unblock the situation and propose a sustainable and suitable residential solution for homeless families. Especially since the return of tourists to Paris leads some hotels to stop the social.