French police evicting migrants from a squat in a disused industrial building not far from the Paris 2024 Olympic Athlete’s Village in Ile-Saint-Denis.
CAMELIA Toldea has packed her family’s suitcases ready for a quick exit from an abandoned building where she and dozens of other Roma live, fearful the squat will be next in a wave of evictions near Paris’ 2024 Olympic Games facilities.
Romanian-born Toldea, her husband and three children are among thousands of migrants, asylum seekers and Roma caught up in evictions in the north Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis that are aggravating the city’s homelessness problem ahead of the games.
More than half of the structures being built or renovated for the Summer Games starting in July are located in Seine-Saint-Denis, including the under-construction Olympic Village.
Spreading east from the river Seine and home to more than 1.6 million people, Seine-Saint-Denis is the poorest department in France.
With asylum seekers and Roma taking shelter there, it has the largest number of squats and informally built slums of any department in the country, according to a 2021 report by the housing authority.
Families waiting with their suitcases after being evicted from a squat in a disused industrial building not far from the Olympic Athlete’s Village in Paris. — Reuters
At least 60 squats in Seine-Saint-Denis were shut down in 2023, according to a tally based on administrative and court documents and interviews with more than 50 squatters, lawyers, prosecutors, social workers, activists and local politicians, in what advocates and some officials said appeared to be a policy aimed at beautifying the area for the sporting event.
The Seine-Saint-Denis branch of France’s interior ministry, known as the prefecture, said the squat evictions were not connected to the Olympic games, but follow normal legal procedures. These were made faster by a new law passed in July that also imposes large fines and prison sentences for illegal occupation.
In 2022, the prefecture said, there were just under 80 squat closures. The tally of 60 evictions in 2023 is almost certainly an undercount, advocates said. The prefecture has not complied with a freedom of information ruling that it should provide data for squat evictions from 2018 to 2023.
The squat closures are pushing more vulnerable people into unstable living situations after the government reduced social hotel places used for emergency housing in the suburb by 1,000, roughly a 10% cut, Valerie Puvilland, operational director of Interlogement 93, the operator that manages emergency housing for the state in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, said.
At least 3,000 people have been affected by the squat closures. Some are ending up on the streets of Seine-Saint Denis and other Paris districts, while others were sent to distant parts of France, advocates and squatters said.
“The Olympic Games are adding additional pressure because there are fewer hotels renting rooms for social cases,” said Lea Filoche, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing, citing decisions by some hotels to be ready for an influx of visitors.
Of 32 closed squats, 13 were within 2km of a main Olympic site in the 236 sq km Seine-Saint-Denis.
One, an old cement factory a stone’s throw away from the future Athlete’s Village and housing some 400 migrants mostly from Sudan and Chad, was closed by police in April.
A Roma camp of 700 people behind the North Paris Arena in Villepinte was also shut down, two witnesses said.
The evictions have exacerbated homelessness as the turfed-out residents add to already outsized demand for social housing and state-provided accommodation, Puvilland said.
Filoche said she had never seen so many people on the streets on Paris, especially children.
Toldea in her self-built house in a disused warehouse in Ile-Saint-Denis. — Reuters
“If their aim is to have the Games where we don’t see poverty, then the plan to evict squats is not a good plan – it is stupid, they are evicting people from squats and putting them in the public space,” said Filoche, who called on the government to requisition empty buildings, including former hospitals and offices, to house the homeless.
Highlighting the situation, on Dec 13, Interlogement 93 said it had no shelter places available, leaving 665 callers on the street, including 54 pregnant women.
Interlogement 93 data shows that unmet demand on some days last month was almost double compared to last year. The emergency housing provider cited a number of overlapping issues including a reduction of available places and squat closures.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo warned in November that the city would not be “ready” to provide shelter for the homeless in time for the Olympics. The national government did not respond to request for comment.
The empty warehouse containing self-built wooden cabins that houses Toldea’s family along with about 70 other Roma is located in Ile Saint Denis, about 2km from the future Athletes’ Village.
The family was evicted from a previous squat in the area in May, and earlier in the year police ran them out of a disused hotel they had occupied. Now, Toldea worries she won’t find anywhere else to live in Seine-Saint-Denis, after a November mayoral decision to close the squat.
Victor Drot, an official in the Ile Saint Denis mayor’s office said the looming eviction followed a fire at the warehouse. Citing the long backlog for social housing, Drot said “there is no solution in this town”.
Toldea applied for social housing two years ago. The average wait time is eight years, Drot said.
“We can’t go anywhere else. The kids go to school here, we know the area,” said Toldea, 31, who sells bric-a-brac at the Clignancourt flea market nearby.
Many of those who were evicted were offered places in other parts of France following a push by the national government this year to “unclog” the Paris region, which has the highest demand for emergency housing in the country.
Then-housing minister Olivier Klein said in May that homeless people would be relocated to other regions and linked the push to the Games, saying hotels were terminating government contracts so as to welcome tourists for the event.
Another national government plan, for “Zero Delinquency” during the Olympics, included measures to dismantle squats.
“People can’t see slums and shanty towns. With the Olympics, we are selling the image of France abroad,” said Sebastien Piffeteau, a prosecutor briefed on the plan who is coordinating Olympics-related affairs in the common law division of the Tribunal in Bobigny, which oversees Seine-Saint-Denis.
Squatting in the city can be traced to 19th century working-class radicalism of the Paris Commune. In recent years migrants have also turned to disused buildings for shelter.
Advocates say squats are often the only option for housing, while critics say they are a dangerous nuisance.
The evictions were fanned by the law passed in July which criminalises occupation of industrial and commercial properties, as well as residential, said Eric Mathais, chief prosecutor of Bobigny tribunal.
As well as evictions from squats, data from Paris authorities show that they have been clearing camps set up by homeless people around the city with greater frequency. Paris prefecture said 35 camps were torn down this year, compared to 19 in 2022.
While in some cases accommodation has been offered, Paris authorities have noticed a “staggering” increase in homeless people sleeping near the town hall, said deputy Filoche.
Services for the homeless – including food banks, showers, domiciliation services, luggage storage – were “full and in the red,” she said.
The public body in charge of Olympic infrastructure, the Solideo, says the Athletes’ Village will be converted into nearly 3,000 homes, 17% of which are general social housing units. Local groups say that this not enough and that prices to buy are out of reach for many from the area.
Abdallah Ali, a refugee from Sudan, and 27 other refugees and asylum seekers were among the 400 people evicted in April from the cement factory, less than 500m from the Athletes Village, near the river Seine.
Ali and the others were taken in grey coaches to a hotel in a sleepy suburb south of Paris. A week later they were all told to leave with no explanation, he said, showing a text message informing him that his stay at the hotel ended on May 4.
Ali had been sleeping rough since leaving the hotel, he said in September.
“It’s not right to throw us out on the street like this. We work in France, we have more of a right to a place to live than the athletes coming in 2024,” said Ali, a waste collector, whose documents show has been on a waiting list for social housing since 2018. — Reuters
