Unicef and the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), which publish a report on Wednesday, call on the government “to implement a policy from the street to housing” on “emergency” and “long term”.
At least 1,990 children are without an accommodation solution a few days before the start of the school year, according to the barometer of street children published on Wednesday August 30 by Unicef France and the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS). Compared to the start of the 2022 school year, 20% more children are without accommodation and 2.5 times more than 18 months ago, specify the associations.
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“It’s a harsh statement of collective failure”, laments Wednesday on franceinfo Pascal Brice, president of the FAS. He regrets that “emergency accommodation, housing and migration policies” in place in France “fail to resolve this issue, despite significant resources” allocated. For the FAS, the increase in the number of children without accommodation is due to a set of factors: “A breakdown of social housing”, “a migration policy such that families do not have access to work”, evokes its president Pascal Brice.
Complaints will be filed against prefects who use selection criteria
Pascal Brice also announces that associations “will sue” the prefects they accuse “to set up selection criteria” to obtain emergency accommodation due to lack of space. Unicef and the FAS have identified 3,735 family members who had called 115 on the night of August 21 to 22 and who could not be accommodated due to a lack of available places in the accommodation facilities that could accommodate them. Of these people, 1,990 were under the age of 18, including 480 under the age of three.
Île-de-France is the region with the highest number of family members whose applications are not filled (1,598). In the regions, the situation is also tense, particularly in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (476), in Hauts-de-France (416) and in Occitanie (314).
An observation probably underestimated
Associations are concerned about the fact that 80% of children without accommodation said they had already slept rough the day before they applied for accommodation. This testifies, according to the organizations, to the generally sustainable nature of street courses. They emphasize that their findings remain fragmentary. Many families do not call 115, as do unaccompanied minors on the street, or people living in squats or slums.
Unicef France and the Federation of Solidarity Actors urge the government to give itself the means to honor its commitment to “no longer have any children on the street”, will expressed in October 2022 by the Minister of Housing at the time Olivier Klein. Because if the capacity of the accommodation park was maintained at 205,000 places during the winter of 2022-2023, the associations have noticed an increase in the number of releases to the street since the end of winter, in particular “due to the drop in resources devoted to emergency accommodation which led to the elimination of many places in hotels”. This situation turned out to be critical this summer with the heat wave. Organizations hammer the “dangerous and unsuitable character of the street”.
Facilitate “access of families to ordinary housing”
Unicef and FAS believe that hotel accommodation, emergency and temporary accommodation, “does not meet the basic needs of the 29,780 children who live there”. These are in total “more than 31,000 children who expect the government to take ambitious action”. Pascal Brice, president of the FAS, asks “the government to end this policy of emergency accommodation closures”.
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Unicef France and the FAS thus call the ministers “newly appointed to implement a street housing policy with specific attention to children and acting according to two distinct temporalities: emergency and long term”. They plead for the consecration “sufficient means so that all children are accommodated unconditionally and in accordance with their best interests and so that families’ access to ordinary accommodation is facilitated”. Pascal Brice claims “urgent structural responses”. The president of the FAS would like the executive to take this observation into account in “its amending finance law for 2023, its 2024 budget”, he also asks “a programming law” specific. “A beautiful theme for the meeting” scheduled for Wednesday of all party leaders around Emmanuel Macron.