Paris authorities continue to clear streets and alleys of asylum seekers ahead of the Olympic Games due to take place at the end of next week, Bild reports.
Authorities have been evicting people since last April for the upcoming games, according to a report by Le Revers de la Médaille, a collective representing 90 associations.
More than 12,545 people have been relocated in 13 months, and the number of tent cities being dismantled has also increased over the period. Among the homeless people being relocated are immigrants, women and children who were already in vulnerable situations.
Authorities are displacing asylum seekers, drug addicts and families living in unfavourable conditions. However, no safe solution to their difficulties or housing is provided to them.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have arrived in France in recent years, and nowhere is this more evident than in the grim suburb in the shadow of the City of Light. About a third of the more than 1.6 million people living in Seine-Saint-Denis are immigrants – the highest rate in the country. This influx puts a strain on the housing stock and the government.
In Seine-Saint-Denis, thousands of people live in street camps, shelters or abandoned buildings like this former warehouse – more than in any other administrative district in France, according to a 2021 report by France’s housing authority. For many of the district’s residents, squats are an eyesore standing in the way of long overdue revitalisation.
Building owners often go to court to evict them, and a new law passed last year has made life easier for them by shortening eviction procedures and imposing significant fines and prison sentences on squatters. But solutions to the housing shortage are hard to come by. There are not enough homeless shelters. Pressure to tighten border controls and increase deportations of illegal immigrants is intense.
The Paris 2024 Organising Committee has said it is not responsible for the government’s social policies.
The Summer Olympics-2024 will be held in the French capital Paris from July 26 to August 11.
