In her 18 m2 modular accommodation lined with sheet steel, Famara Ndeo is "suffocating" under the heat wave of the last few days, after having shivered there last winter.

"We were released with the Olympics (...), we are abandoned", declares, bitterly, the 32-year-old Mauritanian, dock agent at Roissy airport, who claims not to have seen since December a representative of 'Adef, the housing manager.

Broken ventilation and hotplates, cockroaches, clogged toilets…: the list of complaints grows longer over the months.

Asked by AFP, the organization did not wish to speak.

Since March 2021, some 300 workers, mainly Africans, have lived like Mr. Ndeo in a temporary residence in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) financed by Solideo, the company responsible for the Olympic works.

These migrant workers were expelled from their homes to allow the construction of the village which should accommodate 14,500 athletes and coaches.

417 euros per month

"We are proud to be able to allow foreign workers to come to France, and it is our responsibility to house them in decent conditions", continues the elected official, assuring that they occupy "a temporary residence of good quality" .

The left-wing municipality "unfailingly" supports these migrants, who will remain in this city in the first ring of Paris served by two metro lines: after a long standoff, the occupants of the home have obtained the construction of two new social residences of 150 housing units each in Saint-Ouen.

A first home is due to emerge from the ground in early 2023, in the Docks eco-district.

On the other hand, the second, located in the city center, is suffering a significant delay and will not be delivered before the Games, indicates the sub-prefect of Saint-Denis Vincent Lagoguey.

The construction site of the Olympic village on the Saint-Denis site, May 23, 2022 FRANCK FIFE AFP / Archives

Local residents filed an appeal for the cancellation of its building permit, but the Council of State dismissed them at the end of April, paving the way for the resumption of work.

While waiting for these brand new premises, each worker must pay 417 euros per month to stay in this temporary four-storey residence, which looks like a classic apartment building.

But many of them miss the old home and its community life.

"We had a large shared kitchen," recalls Diarra Samba, who now has to prepare his meals on two small hotplates.

"It's scrap metal"

"With the heat and the smells, it's shit, we have to open the window and the door" of the studio, deplores the Malian, who arrived in France twenty-five years ago as a clerk in a restaurant in the neighborhood Defense business.

This pious father also regrets not being able to pray with his neighbors in "a common room", as he had become accustomed to.

After their day's work, during which most of these men perform arduous tasks with staggered hours, many gather around a few benches at the entrance to the home.

View of the Olympic Village construction site for the Paris 2024 Games in Seine-Saint-Denis, May 23, 2022 FRANCK FIFE AFP / Archives

Pack of six bottles of water in hand, Moussa Coulibaly, a Malian cleaning agent, delays the return to his accommodation as long as possible in order to escape the furnace.

"Some stay until 3-4 a.m. outside. We can't sleep. Here it's a bungalow, it's not real walls, it's scrap metal", regrets Mr. Coulibaly in showing the metal structure of the facade.

"My bed is a hot plate," says another resident.

A few hundred meters away, work on the Olympic village continues.

With an objective stated by the Paris-2024 organizing committee: "Provide an optimal welcome" to future champions.

© 2022 AFP