Galoa Minata, 3, is tired. She’s been waiting in the cold, in a static position for more than an hour and a half, while it’s 10 degrees outside in Paris, and she can’t take it anymore. She cries, and her mother Maimouna tenderly passes her hand over her face to try to reassure her. Beside her, a few hundred people gathered in front of the Town Hall, to try to obtain a place of accommodation thanks to the association Utopia 56which uses solidarity hosts*.
Most of these people sleep in the subway or in tents under bridges. Maimouna and Galoa Minata took up residence underground, in the dens of the Parisian transport network, on December 8. They sleep without a mattress, “we put the children on their feet”, explains Maimouna, who manages to keep smiling despite the situation, the cold and the people chasing them at night.
At his side, there is Aicha, seven months pregnant, and as much time on the street. Her foot that she shows us is swollen, she has trouble walking and regularly goes to the Lariboisière hospital for treatment. For months she has been calling 115 every day without getting a positive answer, as she proves to us by showing her call log. “I have an occasional night out with Utopia,” she says.
Binate, Yaya and Ferima, Amair and Mastoura, Jonas…
All these situations, Christophe, in charge of the family division of Utopia 56, knows them well. Pregnant women, families with very young children in the street, sick people, he met hundreds of them. He is there with his colleagues and volunteers from the association every evening, to register the families and warn solidarity hosts, in the hope that these people will be taken care of.
That evening we also spoke with Binate, 25, who is present with her one-year-old son and her husband and have been homeless for almost 3 months; Yaya and Ferima who are there with their one-year-old baby; Amair, 9 years old and his mother Mastoura; Jonas with his 10-year-old daughter Abigail; Macoura, with her 4-year-old asthmatic son; Mabrouk, with her two children aged 5 and 7 and her one-year-old granddaughter who cries constantly during the interview, and who could not be changed all day… All these people explained to us that they slept in the metro or in tents “under a bridge”.
The saturated 115
In October, associations for the defense of the homeless had estimated at around 2,000 the number of homeless children in France. 115 services have been saturated since September. On December 5, for example, 5,014 people called this hotline for homeless people without obtaining accommodation, according to data put forward by the Collective of United Associations, which brings together 39 organizations including the Abbé-Pierre Foundation, Emmaüs, the Red Cross and ATD Quart-Monde.
“Despite the maintenance of the 197,000 accommodation places in operation and the promise of the Minister of Housing that there will be no more street children this winter, the situation remains dramatic”, declared in a press release, on December 14 , the Collective of United Associations.
200 additional places
This evening, for the people waiting in front of the Town Hall, it is exceptional, everyone will be accommodated, in total 76 people and 26 families. Several pregnant women, several babies including a 7 month old. Christophe has already seen a 3-week-old baby. “We usually have half of the people who stay outside. Children’s rights must be respected, in particular the right to accommodation, and there must be a dignified reception policy,” laments the project manager.
To try to get things done, Utopia 56 is bringing individual and class action lawsuits. With Médecins du Monde, the association attacked the State to force it to open the reception center for Ukrainians at the Porte de la Villette in Paris (Paris Event Center) to accommodate people of other nationalities surviving in the street. Over there, nearly half of the 250 places available are vacant every evening, while a few hundred meters or kilometers away, hundreds of people sleep in the metro, squats, or sometimes even on the street. The Council of State rejected the associations’ request, but the State, coincidence of the calendar or not, decided to open the day after the hearing 200 additional places in this same center but well separated from the Ukraine system.
“The positive point of the Ukrainian situation is that we saw that we could unblock the situation quickly, and we can only be happy about that,” comments Samy Djemaoun, lawyer for Médecins du Monde and Utopia 56 and specialist in fundamental rights and freedoms. So it’s not a problem of means, it’s a problem of will. They opened the Paris Event Center and the domain of Grignon, they can open other places. »
The State opposes the accommodation of a 4-month-old baby
To try to help as many people as possible, the lawyer is reduced with one of his colleagues to seize the judge of summary freedom for each case individually. To “show that behind the saturation of 115, there are real dramatic human situations”. Fourteen referrals in two weeks carried out every evening until late at night, and for which he obtained 10 victories, making it possible to accommodate these families for a week or a month at most. In the lot, a family with a three-week-old child.
In many cases, the State has appealed, including on a family with a 4-month-old child and a single pregnant woman with her 5-year-old daughter, to put these people back on the street, as 20 minutes was able to see this from documents provided by Samy Djemaoun.
No increase in places planned
If Elisabeth Borne wished Wednesday, by visiting an emergency accommodation center for young women, to improve the 115, the telephone line dedicated to the homeless, in terms of answers and listeners, the trend is not really to the increase in places. The government had even planned during the examination of the 2023 budget to remove it, before changing its mind in the face of protests from ten socialist and environmental mayors of large cities and associations for the poorly housed.
According to the association, the Great Cold plan launched on December 12 in Paris and in other departments of France has not changed the situation, which still sees so many people turn up in the evening to have a place to sleep. Contacted by 20 minutesthe housing assistant at the town hall of Paris, Ian Brossat, explains that a former Go Sport whose premises are owned by the town hall of Paris has been open at Porte de Saint-Cloud since the start of the Great Cold plan and that four gymnasiums have been mobilized since October.
But Ian Brossat recognizes that this is insufficient, the gymnasiums in question being “full to bursting”. He also notes that more and more children and sometimes pregnant women are in this situation. “The city has made proposals to the State to create several hundred places, in particular old disused schools. State services have visited them and we are awaiting their response, ”says the elected official. At the end of 2017, the President of the Republic had however promised that there would be “no one left on the street before the end of the year”.
* To become a solidarity host, you can visit the dedicated page on the Utopia 56 website. The association also looking for volunteers.