Talk to each other, to avoid evictions without a future. This Thursday, the Metropolitan Council of Montpellier (Hérault) recorded the signing of an agreement, which commits the community, state services and the Abbé-Pierre Foundation to reflect, together, on a sustainable reduction of slums. A complex approach, which concerns many cities in France. But this partnership, in Montpellier, is not just another administrative paperwork. For the associations, it is the guarantee that no more evictions will be carried out in the metropolis without there having been, upstream, a substantive work.
Because that hasn’t always been the case. In September 2021, the associations denounced the manu militari evacuation by the security forces of two makeshift camps, those of Zénith and Mas Rouge, in eight days, without their having been consulted. “Useless” evictions, because the occupants are thrown into the street, and build other slums, lamented with 20 minutes the local leader of an association. And above all, “traumatic”, especially for the youngest.
Avoid that “we end up with a new slum, a few meters away”
This new agreement aims “to avoid finding ourselves in the situations that we have known in the past of evictions from a slum, and “Quick, quick, we have to find solutions”, explains Clara Gimenez (PCF) , the vice-president of the metropolis in charge of social cohesion. This upstream reflection, initiated by the associations, aims to avoid that “we end up with a new slum, a few meters further, by finding sustainable solutions for these people”, continues the elected official.
“The objective is to all work together, also with the inhabitants of the slums, for a real absorption of the slums, and not simple evictions”, confides to 20 minutes Sylvie Chamvoux, the regional director of the Abbé-Pierre foundation. Identifying vacant housing, offering occupants temporary and then sustainable housing, so that there will not be a single slum in the metropolis in the coming years, this is the roadmap for this vast project. “We are going to give ourselves time, notes Sylvie Chamvoux. Because in Montpellier, there are few accommodations available, it is very complicated. This will therefore, first of all, involve the improvement of living conditions in certain slums, because they will not all be able to be absorbed within the next three years. »
In the metropolis of Montpellier, today, around 550 people live in around ten slums, notably at the Millénaire, at the Zénith, near the Bonnier de la Mosson estate, at the Mas de Saporta, near Ikea and Maurin. The Celleneuve slum, one of the largest in the city, occupied by more than 200 people, has been reduced in recent months. About fifty people were able to access housing, and 164 were accommodated in a “transition village”, in La Rauze, while waiting to find a more durable roof. It is these encouraging results that have led associations, local authorities and State services to come (back) around the same table.