20 Minutes
followed a hearing at the administrative court in which Awa* is trying to obtain emergency accommodation for herself and her three-month-old baby.
Despite the young age of the child, the State requested the rejection of the request, as in twenty cases followed by Samy Djemaoun and his colleague Roman Sangue, who defended a three-week-old baby.
On January 6, in Paris alone, 223 minors who called 115 with their families could not be accommodated.
Awa* is worried.
This 28-year-old woman from Côte d'Ivoire carries her three-month-old baby in her arms, who is sleeping peacefully.
She is waiting in a corridor on Monday for the hearing which will decide whether or not she will have emergency accommodation, since her lawyer, Samy Djemaoun, is attacking the State in the administrative court to force it to house this family, who desperately calling 115 for months.
Everyone could say to themselves that a three-month-old infant is necessarily a priority, and that if this Ivorian has not managed to find accommodation, it is because the telephone services of 115 are outdated, or that there is has a bug somewhere.
But no, for the State, and it is written black on white, she and her child should not be housed, because there is "more priority", if we sum up, without in any way this " priority” is never proven.
“Wrong Deficiency”
The "memorandum in defense" of the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region, which puts forward the arguments of the State, therefore, seems straight out of a dystopian novel.
There is indeed saturation of emergency accommodation, recognizes the prefecture, but if
in fine
a three-month-old baby is not housed, it is not because of a "faulty deficiency", but because there are much worse cases, in short.
Here is the verbatim: “The saturation of the accommodation system (…) may moreover in itself be enough to rule out this alleged lack of demand, even though the applicants are parents of young children, given the large number of requests from families with children.
Understand: if tomorrow, the situation is such that women give birth in the street, then other women who ask for help will just have to go to hell.
As an example of this worst case, the lawyer for the prefecture cites cases where a legal request for emergency accommodation was rejected by the urgent applications judge: children aged 6 months and 5 years, a child aged 4 months, an 8 month old child.
It is the proof, in short, says this speech, that one can leave a baby of three months in the street.
To AFP, the Ministry of Housing also indicated that it was a question of avoiding creating a "skip the line effect" and that it was up to the professionals of the emergency accommodation services to determine who can access to places in priority, and not to justice.
More vulnerable?
On her bench at the Paris administrative court, Awa is busy cradling her baby.
Since giving birth on October 6, she has only managed to secure 8 nights in emergency accommodation.
Yesterday, she slept in a gymnasium, sometimes she manages to get a place via the Utopia 56 association, with which her lawyer is fighting.
Other times, she slept on the streets.
“I am tired of this situation.
I had no rest after giving birth.
In the gymnasium where I sleep there is noise, my baby does not sleep,” says Awa, her face dark, worried like a mother can be for her child.
The little one has a cough, he's sick, he's got a fever, she says, and that's what captures all his attention while at the bar, his lawyer gets heated.
“Concretely on what criteria do you base yourself to say that there are more vulnerable?, apostrophe Samy Djemaoun, for the attention of the state lawyer, who did not provide any list of people accommodated supposed to be more priority on the days when Awa called 115. It is very disturbing that we are opposed to an argument by telling us that there is worse without proving it to us.
This is not the first time that Samy Djemaoun has come up against this argument from the prefecture.
For several weeks, he has been suing the State to try to house these families.
On January 6, it was for a family with three children, including one with a disability, who suffers from a rare congenital disease, a hearing reported by
Mediapart
.
On January 3, for a pregnant mother with a four-year-old daughter, a mother with a four-month-old son and a couple with two two-month-old and two-year-old daughters.
And many others.
In all, since December 1, 2022, Samy Djemaoun has seized the interim relief judge twenty times, winning thirteen times, sometimes against the prefecture, sometimes against the French Office for Immigration and Integration, which must accommodate the families. who have applied for asylum.
A three week old baby
The State even appealed to oppose the accommodation of a three-week-old infant, defended by master Roman Sangue, a colleague of Samy Djemaoun also in connection with Utopia 56. In this case, the prefecture lost in first instance, but appealed.
“The state always opposes our requests.
We had no case at the administrative court in the first instance in which the prefecture told us: "OK, we are going to host".
At the start, we thought we would be able to accommodate all the children, but no.
And the Council of State ruled in favor of the Dihal [Interministerial delegation for accommodation] for a three-and-a-half-year-old child [who therefore was not accommodated], so now we are focusing on children in very young age", comments Maître Sangue.
However, according to the Code of Social Action and Families, "any homeless person in a situation of medical, psychological or social distress" must have access, "at any time, to an emergency accommodation system" .
If in France there are around 200,000 emergency accommodation places, of which almost half are in Ile-de-France, it is clear that this is not enough to accommodate all the children, not even young children.
As the prefecture itself notes, for the territory of Paris alone, on the day of January 6, 2023, 651 people saw their request for accommodation rejected, including 472 people in a family situation with children, including 223 minors and 84 women. alone.
But this Tuesday, January 10, good news arrived on Awa's phone: she won against the state, which now has 48 hours to find them accommodation.
*Name has been changed
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