Europe 1 and AFP / Photo credits: MATTES René / hemis.fr / hemis.fr / Hemis via AFP 6:02 p.m., March 26, 2024
In the program "Europe 1 1 p.m." on Tuesday, the mayor (ex-LR) of Orléans Serge Grouard denounced the transfers of homeless people to his municipality, which would be done "on the sly" before the 2024 Olympic Games. Statements that the Loiret prefecture insisted on denying this Tuesday afternoon.
The mayor of Orléans Serge Grouard lets out a cry of anger. On Europe 1 this Tuesday, the councilor (ex-LR) denounced the transfers of homeless people, from Paris to his municipality, which have been underway since May 2023, with the aim of clearing up space in the capital before Olympic Games. According to him, these transfers are made without any information from state services.
“The situation that I gradually discovered is indeed homeless people who come from Paris, most of the time almost exclusively irregular migrants,” summarizes the elected official in the
Europe 1 1 p.m.
program . According to the mayor, it's "at the rate of one coach every three weeks with between 30 and 50 people on board depending on the time. In total, it's around 500 people". And the elected official denounced: "It's an organized system, these buses are chartered by the State which sends these people to us. I find it unacceptable, especially since it is done on the sly."
The arrival of migrants in Orléans is not linked to the Olympics, indicates the Loiret prefecture
In May 2023, the government wanted to encourage these thousands of homeless people concerned to leave the Paris region for the provinces, arguing the drop in the number of hotels ready to accommodate them. However, the Loiret prefecture made a point this Tuesday of denying these comments by Serge Grouard.
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"In order to respond to the scale of emergency accommodation needs in Ile-de-France, ten regional temporary reception centers have been set up by the State on a national scale to direct part of people taken care of as part of shelter operations carried out every week in this region", indicated the prefecture, specifying that this system was "unrelated to the organization of the Olympic Games as has already been explained in May 2023".
Still according to the prefecture, which confirms the opening of one of these temporary reception centers in the Loiret in May 2023, "every three weeks, a maximum of 50 people are taken care of in this airlock managed by an association mandated and financed by the State” and which are subject to “an administrative situation assessment”. At the end of this period, people are offered guidance based on their situation in systems distributed between the six departments of the region. In ten months, 519 people were supported in this context in the Centre-Val de Loire region, including 134 people in Loiret.
Associations denounce a “social cleansing” of the Ile-de-France region
For several months, associations have denounced a "social cleansing" of the Ile-de-France region, progressively emptied according to them of its most precarious populations living on the streets in preparation for the Olympics. In the National Assembly, the Minister responsible for Housing, Guillaume Kasbarian, warned against "confusion": the individuals hosted in the SAS of Orléans are "not all foreigners or migrants", he said. he answered questions to the government from the RN deputy for Loiret Mathilde Paris.
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- Brittany: how are the homeless people displaced from Paris received for the Olympic Games?
“Every evening, thanks to the action of the State, the ministry and associations, 200,000 homeless people find refuge and a roof over their head in our country. That’s 200,000 nationally, 100,000 in Ile-de-France ", he explained. But due to the saturation of supply, he recalled, the government implemented this “loosening policy”, “without any link with the Olympic Games”. In total, “3,800 people” (...) have found “refuge in regional SAS” since March 2023, said the delegate minister.