Demonstration in Paris to defend the right to housing

“Angry tenants, we’re not going to let it go. This Saturday, around 350 people demonstrated this Saturday afternoon in Paris to denounce rental evictions as well as a bill that risks accelerating them.

“A roof = a right” or “the street is death, housing is life”, could we read on the banners of the demonstrators, who gathered at Place de la Bastille, the day after the end of the winter break, synonymous with the resumption of rental eviction procedures.

A law aims to toughen penalties

“We denounce the return of evictions, power cuts and we are asking for a drop in rents and rental charges which knock out tenants in the social sector”, commented Jean-Baptiste Eyraud, spokesperson for the association Droit au logement. (DAL).

In a press release published this Saturday, the Generation movement. s (Nupes), demanded “the ban on evictions without alternative accommodation throughout the year”: “we do not tolerate seeing the number of homeless people increase”.

The demonstrators were also protesting against the bill by Macronist deputy Guillaume Kasbarian, currently being examined at second reading in the National Assembly. It plans to toughen penalties against squatters and to speed up procedures in the event of unpaid rent.

Criminalize tenants

For Eddie Jacquemart, president of the National Housing Confederation, this is a “societal decline”. “This law will criminalize tenants, it will contribute to the hunt for the poor orchestrated by Emmanuel Macron”, he denounced.

The Parisian demonstrators then rushed towards the Ministry of Housing. In the procession, Farida* came to protest against the evictions but also against unsanitary housing, like hers.

“It tires me morally and physically”

“It’s hellish not to have decent housing, it tires me morally and physically,” she says. She has been waiting for social housing for several years. “I’m not asking for the moon, you have to have a little humanity”.

A dozen rallies and demonstrations took place on Saturday in France in different cities, such as Lille, Montpellier and Bayonne, at the call of unions and associations for the defense of the right to housing.

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