The French government plans to move homeless people out of Paris ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in the capital, sparking criticism from some mayors of regional towns and villages which are expected to house them.
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From mid-March, the government began asking officials around France to create “temporary regional accommodation facilities” that can handle an outflux of homeless people from the capital, many of them migrants.
Housing Minister Olivier Klein explained to parliament earlier this month that the changes were necessary because of an expected accommodation crunch in the City of Light during the Rugby World Cup from September and the Olympics next July and August.
Many low-end hotels that authorities use to provide emergency accommodation to homeless people plan to rent their rooms at market rates to sports fans and holiday makers.
The government estimates that hotel capacity available to accommodate the homeless “will fall by 3,000-4,000 places due to these events,” Klein told MPs on May 5.
He said the expected fall “obliges us to ask questions and prepare for the situation… It’s about opening accommodation spaces in provincial areas for people who require emergency accommodation.”
But some of the proposed locations are already sparking concern among local elected figures.
The mayor of Bruz in northwest Brittany, Philippe Salmon, voiced his opposition on Tuesday to the idea of a new centre in his town of 18,000 people near regional capital Rennes. “We are not in favour of the creation of a facility in our area, in conditions that we consider unacceptable,” he said. The proposed site was next to a railway line and “polluted by hydrocarbons and heavy metals,” he said.
‘Positive in principle’
Pascal Brice, the head of the Federation for Solidarity Workers, a homelessness charity, said that “putting people up in good conditions all over…
