It is sure, she does not seem to be the ideal neighbor but risks today, thanks to the winter break, to find herself on the street, at 62 years old. Dominique Delage, a retired carer and Christian evangelist, has the habit of praying out loud, which has the gift of ruining the lives of his neighbors since his move, in April 2019, to the Olibets social residence in Talence, near Bordeaux.
She is subject to eviction in the coming days, without any housing offer having been offered to her so far. If she pays her rent receipts, it is repeated noise pollution in her residence that earns her a notice to leave the premises. Upset, she has trouble organizing her thoughts and finding her way through the various administrative procedures she has to take, even if she is supported by a social worker.
A lease terminated by court order
After a petition signed by eight tenants exasperated and embarrassed in “the peaceful enjoyment” of their accommodation, the case goes to court which decides on September 8, 2022 to terminate the lease. He is accused of various neighborhood disturbances “insults, sermons and prayers, impossibility of enjoying the balcony without suffering racist, homophobic and misogynistic remarks, throwing peels in green spaces”, mentions the decision of the Bordeaux judicial court. If she refutes xenophobic remarks, she recognizes that she “went a bit far in making homophobic remarks. We must leave them alone, make their life. I am ready to ask for forgiveness”.
“It is the State (under the right to opposable housing DALO that she has requested) which will make the decision to direct her file to one lessor or another, specifies Emilie Degrugillier, the deputy director of the Bordeaux agency. Atlantique from CDC Habitat, the social landlord of his residence. We, as donors, are only enforcing a court order. The association right to housing (DAL) of the Gironde which accompanies it hopes to obtain at least a delay from the lessor until the response intervenes.
“All measures to prevent deportation were taken not to come to this and it lasted for many months,” says Emilie Degrugillier, who explains that the general data protection regulations (GDPR) do not allow not to go into the details of the personal situation of this tenant. “The neighbors were not associated with the attempts at conciliation, it is not normal”, notes the representative of the DAL, since it is a question of nuisance denounced by the neighborhood. She believes, entering the accommodation where we feel that the tenant is overwhelmed by events, that she “needs help”.
“If I don’t pray, I fall”
After the destruction of bar D in which she lived in the Cité de la Benauge, she was relocated to Talence. “I was already praying out loud, that was no problem, says the sixty-year-old, but since I’ve been here, as we’re on top of each other and it’s brick, it’s not isolated, I have a lot of reproaches”. When asked if she tried to make less noise by praying, she replied, “I didn’t think of buying an amplifier or a microphone. I take things with humor otherwise I would go crazy. »
Listening to him, we feel a fragility and a certain loneliness even if his daughter helps him as best he can in this difficult moment. “The pastor of my church had advised us to read aloud to memorize the word of God and I may have taken it too much to heart,” she concedes. If I don’t pray, I’ll fall…” She also recounts her material setbacks since her arrival in the accommodation and the lack of responsiveness they have aroused, from her point of view, in her landlord: a boiler that leaks and floods her apartment, a faulty parking door that generates noise near her bedroom and an infestation of rats for which she called an extermination company. “The presence of rats should have given rise to relocation at that time,” points out the DAL. On these points, conciliations have been attempted without success.
The sexagenarian is worried about the fate of her three cats, perched all over the apartment, looking for an adoption solution for two of them. “I certainly won’t be able to take them with me when I have to leave,” she slips.