Paris: 140 people “sheltered” after the evacuation of a camp under metro line 2

The City of Paris announced that it had “sheltered” around 140 people on the street, mostly migrants, evacuated Thursday from a camp under metro line 2 in the northeast, during a joint operation with the police and Île-de-France prefectures. In total, nearly 250 people living in this camp in the 10th arrondissement, as well as on the nearby Jemmapes quay, were offered an accommodation solution by the town hall and the regional prefecture, the City said. Most of them are single men on an “asylum journey” (asylum seekers or recognized refugees), originating in particular from Eritrea, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Some 139 people accepted the accommodation places offered by the City and the State. The Île-de-France prefecture, responsible for emergency accommodation, has offered places in temporary reception “Sas” in the regions and centers in Île-de-France. In the places offered by the town hall, around sixty were supported, including five women. “Only the town hall offered permanent places. On the “Sas” of the prefecture, there is no guarantee after three weeks,” reacted to AFP Yann Manzi, co-founder of the migrant aid association Utopia 56.

A fight against homelessness

“It’s a simulacrum of sheltering on the part of the State,” he said, denouncing an operation of “social cleansing” of this encampment which regularly re-forms under the Jaurès metro station. “The neighborhoods adjoining line 2 have been sacrificed for too long between Barbès and Colonel Fabien. We owe this operation to the people who sleep in the street and we also owe it to local residents,” declared socialist mayor Emmanuel Grégoire. The fight against homelessness “is one of my absolute priorities since the start of my mandate,” added the councilor who is committed to ensuring that “zero children” sleep on the street this winter.

Furthermore, the town hall indicated to AFP that it had accommodated around 270 people, mainly families with children, who had occupied the square in front of the Town Hall since Tuesday where the Paris Council is meeting this week. They had spent a night there, sleeping under tarpaulins, and demonstrated during the day. Some 50 unaccompanied minors, however, remain without solution. The town hall “continues to look for new places” for these young people, according to Fatoumata Koné, deputy in charge of solidarity.