Christian Page's life changes when his wife leaves him. A year later, it is a bailiff who comes to pick him up to dislodge him from home. He will spend three and a half years in the street until he finds a home. A story he tells in a book, Belleville in the heart , and on which he returned to Christophe Hondelatte Tuesday.
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The fall. In 2014, Christian Page has a good life. He is a sommelier in a chic restaurant at the Madeleine, in Paris. He has a son, a wife and lives in a beautiful apartment of 88 square meters. One day, as he prepares to leave for work, his wife calls out to him: "I leave you, I will not be there tonight when you return". An announcement as brutal as unexpected. In shock, Christian Page goes to work anyway. Obviously, it will be the worst service of his career: he is wrong in all orders, spills dishes. When he returns home, the apartment is empty. His wife left with their son. The beginning of the tumble.
"I do not advise a guy on the street to call 115". Christian Page, who does not want to go into too intimate details, takes a leap forward, a year, until the day when a bailiff picks him up, in April 2015. He is fired and finds himself in the street. The first night, he calls 115 (the number of the social samu). "A beginner's mistake", according to him. In his own words, he finds himself in hell, in an overcrowded kennel, with bedbugs, excrement on walls and in showers. He swears he will not go back. "I do not advise a guy on the street to call 115. They have no way," explains Christian Page. "I decided to stay in the street, to find good blankets not to return to this kind of homes," he says.
So it will be the street for Christian Page, who gives himself rules to not permanently sink. First wash, every day. "It's essential," he says. He sleeps where he can, especially near Place Sainte-Marthe, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, close to the evangelical mission which is his home port. That's where he gets all his mail, his paperwork. This is also where he eats. The mission serves 70 breakfasts and 100 dinners a day.
"It's not true that you're starving when you're homeless." Left to disturb, Christian Page does not mince words. "It is not true that we die of hunger when we are homeless, we are not hungry on the streets in France," he says, noting the dozens of associations that distribute meals every day in the French capital. The biggest danger for the homeless, in fact, is the man, he says. The alert begins on the 7th of the month, the day after the 6th, the date on which the SDFs receive their RSA. The 7th begins "the great fair to the detachers."
"Housing did not solve everything." Christian Page will spend three winters in the street. Made famous by his Twitter account, the former SDF told all his adventures, before one day, announce on the social network that Emmaus had found accommodation in the northern suburbs of Paris. "Housing did not solve everything, but I'm still a lot more comfortable, it's a start, it's not a success," he says. Thanks to his book and his testimonies, Christian Page has shed new light on the difficulties faced by the homeless. "People have to realize that there is more than one person dying on the street every day," says the former SDF.
>> Find below the complete Hondelatte Raconte , "Three winters in the street" with Christian Page: