“Talking about social cleansing makes no sense,” retorted to a few journalists the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region (Prif), in charge of emergency accommodation issues, while the authorities have been accused for several months by the associative fabric of carrying out a “social cleansing” of the Paris region to clear the way before the 2024 Olympic Games. This is particularly what more than 70 organizations, including Doctors, denounced at the end of October of the world or Emmaüs France in an open letter addressed to the organizing committee of the Olympic Games (Cojo), athletes and federations.
“We have not set ourselves the objective of zero homeless people in Paris in August 2024”, which is “neither the wish nor the ambition of the City of Paris and the State” and would be “contrary to the dignity of people,” underlined the prefecture. “On the other hand, being able to offer quality places to people who are on the streets in Paris and keeping them in emergency accommodation, doing in-depth social work, we are working on that and we will try to do better during the Olympic period. But it will not be coercive,” we added to the Prif.
“The other side of the coin”
The prefecture, which recalled that 120,000 people are already taken care of on average each night in the region for emergency accommodation, assured that reflection was underway to achieve the release of “additional places” during the Olympics. “We want to have a social legacy in terms of emergency accommodation, we are working on it,” said the prefecture, without quantifying this objective.
Several associations and NGOs, which have grouped together within a collective called “The other side of the medal”, have increased in recent weeks the arrests and the striking actions to denounce a “social cleansing” of the Ile-de-France. France, which according to them has already started, with the eviction in particular of more than 4,000 people from migrant workers’ homes as well as the transfer to reception centers in the provinces of migrants, whose Ile-de-France camps are evacuated.