Thursday evening, January 20, 450 volunteers and 165 agents from the city, the metropolis and the CCAS crisscrossed the streets of Bordeaux to count the homeless. “The figures vary depending on the actors and we have no overall vision”, explained Harmonie Lecerf, deputy mayor in charge of access to rights and solidarity during the presentation of the device. Estimates ranged from several hundred to less than 2,000.
According to the first results of the operation, whose qualitative data on the profiles of people will be further analyzed by a scientific committee in the coming weeks, 561 people have been identified in the streets and camps of the city. “These people come in addition to the 287 men, women and children currently sheltering in squats, whose census was carried out by the municipal and metropolitan services in parallel with the Night of Solidarity. There are thus at least 858 people who require urgent shelter in Bordeaux, ”explains the town hall in a press release. She recalls, targeting state services that “emergency accommodation is a fundamental and unconditional right. »
An “amalgam of situations” for the prefect
She also explains that 43 families (nearly 100 people) are accommodated within its municipal heritage, and that she is setting up structures dedicated to welcoming the homeless, like last winter in Gouffrand, this winter at the Chartrons, with the Abbé-Pierre and Aquitanis Foundation, and in the coming weeks with the creation of modular accommodation.
Prefect Fabienne Buccio was quick to react to the conclusions of this operation in a press release on Friday evening: “The reality of calls to 115 last night [jeudi] formally denies this figure. No call was recorded for a request for emergency accommodation when places were available. She believes that the census takes into account people on the street but also Roma camps and people in squats. “The amalgam of situations takes away all credibility from this action,” she criticizes. The number of people in emergency situations on the street is not known. Yet that was the point of the operation. »