It was obviously necessary to go quickly, very quickly. Too quickly, even, in the eyes of the associations that support homeless people in Rennes and Ille-et-Vilaine. Last week, an old disused hotel which received people in emergency accommodation was evacuated on the orders of the prefecture in Montgermont, north of the Breton capital. As revealed by The Telegramthe building had to be emptied to accommodate homeless people transferred from the Paris region while waiting for the opening of a more permanent place in Bruz.
Already criticized by the mayor of the town for the “unworthy” reception conditions, this sudden arrival of homeless people has also pushed other people in great precariousness to have to go elsewhere. “It’s already very complicated to find places with the 115 but there, everything had to be done quickly. We had people in wheelchairs, families with children, ”explains a regular on the file.
Contacted, the prefecture explains that the Montgermont hotel “could not remain mobilized for emergency accommodation. In the process of being sold, it will be transformed into a “hotel residence with a social vocation” which will notably be able to accommodate asylum seekers, according to the prefecture. It should open at the start of the 2023 school year, when the homeless people of Paris will have left for Bruz.
People sent outside the department
What the associations denounce is the speed of the intervention, but also the absence of local solutions. Several families were sent outside the department of Ille-et-Vilaine. “Seven people were accompanied to two of the three other Breton departments, by a civil protection association”, recognizes the prefecture, which however denies the presence of school children.
The reception project for homeless people from Paris should make it possible to relieve congestion in the capital in a logic of national solidarity. Ten reception “airlocks” are to be created in the regions to accommodate asylum seekers, refugees or people living on the street in Île-de-France. This is already the case in seven regions, and it will soon be in Brittany. In the coming days, fifty people, all volunteers, will thus leave Paris by bus to be “sheltered” in this disused hotel in Montgermont.