France: the 600 homeless who have invested the Place des Vosges have been evacuated

Audio 01:18

The 600 homeless people who had taken over the Place des Vosges in Paris were evacuated.

REUTERS - SARAH MEYSSONNIER

Text by: RFI Follow

4 min

The 600 homeless people who had set up their tents Thursday afternoon on the beautiful Place des Vosges, in the heart of Paris were "sheltered" at the end of the morning on Friday.

They were supported by the “Collectif Réquisitions” which asks the public authorities for decent accommodation conditions.

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In small groups of 10, women, children and single adults board specially chartered coaches.

Direction of emergency accommodation centers first, then hotels.

Thursday afternoon, around

600 people had settled

in this famous Parisian square to challenge the State on the lack of accommodation. A situation denounced by the deputy for solidarity in Paris, Léa Filoche, at the microphone of

Pierre Olivier

of the society service: “ 

These families, we know they are there. There is a part that has just arrived, but a large part of them is (already) officially on the territory, they have no problems with papers, they work… Just that there is no housing, in fact, ”she

says.

"We must create new places", she

warns

, "there are 1,600 hotels in Paris, of which we now know that 70% will not open this summer, so there are empty square meters

 " .

“In Île-de-France, there are 400,000 empty housing units”

The

Réquisitions

collective

at the origin of this action on Place des Vosges also denounces the lack of will of the State, in particular to requisition vacant housing. “ 

To give an idea, there are several thousand people in the street in Paris and a few around. In Île-de-France, there are 400,000 empty housing units. I'm not talking about private housing, I'm talking about institutional housing: it can be banks, it can be insurance, hospitals ... And we ask that these housing be mobilized and it would cost less, I think, that everything they do there. People, for example, are going to go to hotels and it's going to cost a lot of money!

 », Explains Philippe Carreau, member of the collective.

In one year, however, the State has created 2,000 emergency accommodation places, especially in hotels, a figure that remains very insufficient, according to the Réquisition collective. 

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