As the Olympic Games slated for Paris next summer approach, the French government wants to encourage thousands of homeless people, mainly migrants, to leave the Paris region for the provinces, a measure that is causing concern and indignation.
In this sense, the executive has asked the prefects to create “temporary regional reception areas” in all regions, with the exception of Hauts-de-France and Corsica, to “unclog the centers of ‘accommodation’ in Île-de-France.
People invited to leave are supposed to be taken care of for three weeks in these “airlocks” before being directed, in their new region, to the type of accommodation corresponding to their situation. The lack of available accommodation in the Paris region is the argument put forward to justify this device, which is as indignant as it is worrying.
Indeed, many hoteliers no longer want to welcome these precarious public because they expect an influx of customers during the Rugby World Cup next fall, and the Olympic Games in 2024, observed, at the beginning of May at the National Assembly, French Housing Minister Olivier Klein.
Chosen by the executive to host such a reception center, the city of Bruz (18,000 inhabitants, south of Rennes) has expressed its dissatisfaction. “We are not in favor of the installation of such an airlock in our town, under these conditions which we consider unworthy”, indicated the mayor Philippe Salmon, quoted by the press of the hexagon.
In addition, the people displaced in this temporary reception center would not be “by choice” and their reception conditions are “hardly satisfactory”, he lamented.
It is quite possible, according to the prefecture, that some of them have a job in the capital and would like to return there, even if they live there in difficult conditions.
For the president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors, which acts against exclusion, Pascal Brice, also quoted by the local press, “welcome people in good conditions almost everywhere in France rather than on the street in Île- de-France, in principle, it’s positive, but do we give ourselves the means? “.
According to the association manager, the problem 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 matter of putting people on the buses and not dealing with them afterwards, “it is dispersion, not reception”.
For his part, the head of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation (Île-de-France), which fights against unworthy and precarious housing, Éric Constantin, says he doubts that we can find dignified and decent solutions in three weeks to to get people redirected to the provinces out of precariousness on a long-term basis.
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”, he underlined, wondering if the executive wanted to ensure ” that there are no more camps before millions of people arrive in France”.