“We can be surprised at the concordance of the arrival of the Olympic Games and a program which aims to send migrants to the provinces”, points out the head of the Abbé Pierre foundation in Ile-de-France, Eric Constantin. With the approach of the 2024 Olympics which will take place in the capital, the government wants to encourage thousands of homeless people to leave the Paris region. But this device raises concerns and questions among associations and local elected officials responsible for welcoming hundreds of people in their municipalities.
Many hoteliers no longer wish to welcome these precarious public because they expect an influx of customers during the Rugby World Cup next fall, and the Olympics in 2024, observed in early May at the National Assembly the Minister of Housing , Oliver Klein. Nearly 5,000 rooms were thus lost for emergency accommodation, said MP (Modem) Maud Gatel. Since mid-March, the executive has therefore asked the prefects to create “temporary regional reception areas” in all regions, with the exception of Hauts-de-France and Corsica, in order to “unclog the accommodation centres” in Ile-de-France. People invited to leave are supposed to be taken care of for three weeks in these “airlocks” before being “oriented”, in their new region, “to the type of accommodation corresponding to their situation”.
Why does the government want to evacuate the homeless?
The system mainly concerns migrants, many of whom in Ile-de-France live on the streets or in emergency accommodation. However, it does not specifically target them, under the “principle of unconditional reception”, the office of the Minister of Housing told AFP. Designated by the government to host such a reception center, the town of Bruz, (18,000 inhabitants, near Rennes), expressed its dissatisfaction on Tuesday, May 23. “We are not in favor of the installation of such an airlock in our town, under these conditions which we consider unworthy”, said Mayor Philippe Salmon (DVG). The Breton town hall criticizes the choice of land, adjoining a railway line and “polluted by hydrocarbons and heavy metals”, and affirms that the future occupants of the reception center would not come “by choice”.
Since 2021, the government has already put in place a similar system, but focused only on asylum seekers. According to a parliamentary report made public on Tuesday, this system “has demonstrated its usefulness and effectiveness”, but a quarter of the people concerned refused to leave Ile-de-France. The report also calls on the state to better coordinate transfers with municipalities, and to better protect local elected officials.
Because these transfers, the authors recall, are “the subject of political instrumentalization having led to threats and violence” against elected officials, which culminated with the recent resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brévin-les-Pins (Loire -Atlantic). For the president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors, Pascal Brice, “welcome people in good conditions all over France rather than on the streets in Ile-de-France, in principle it’s positive, but do we have the means to do so?
Where will these precarious audiences be moved?
The problem, underlines this association manager, is that “there is a lack of emergency accommodation places” in the host regions, as well as a “political impetus from the Ministry of the Interior for real support work “. Because “if it is a question of putting people on the buses” and then not taking care of them anymore, “it is dispersion, not reception”, according to him. Eric Constantin, head of the Abbé Pierre Foundation in Ile-de-France, says he doubts that we can “find dignified and decent solutions in three weeks” to permanently get people reoriented to the regions out of precariousness.
We can also “be surprised at the concordance of the arrival of the Olympic Games and a program which aims to send migrants to the provinces”, adds Eric Constantin, who wonders if the government wanted to ensure “that ‘there are no more camps before millions of people arrive in France’.