AT Tours, below the A10 motorway, which spans the Loire, a man has found a roof. A roof without tiles or slates, but which will do its job for a winter, and probably beyond. A British wanderer who has been wandering around France for thirty years, Darren Heys, alias “Daz”, is a well-known homeless man from the city center, where he is used to begging between two juggling acts. Three months ago, the man left his makeshift camp, set up on the banks of the river, to “move in” to one of the six caravans made available by the association Entraide et solidarité. Seven “tiny houses” under development complete the site, a former campground now reserved for the accommodation of homeless people.
Daz, 51, was the first to settle there. “It’s silly, but sleeping in a bed and storing your things in a closet is still very appreciable”, he confides on the steps of his ” home Sweet Home “, as he calls it. Five men and one woman are currently benefiting from this innovative device, called “La Maison”, the aim of which is to offer a smooth transition between the street and a closed habitat, on the sidelines of the emergency accommodation offered by Samusocial. Social workers follow one another with the residents during the day. At night, a security guard watches over the site, at the entrance of which modular buildings have been installed for the common areas (toilets, kitchen, laundry room, TV room, etc.). “The great luxury”, says Darren Heys, who can’t believe it, he who knows a lot about the discomfort of life in the great outdoors.
Reach out to local residents
This father of four children aged 6 to 24 – two live in Tours, two others in Bourges, with their respective mothers – estimates that “only six or seven” the number of years he has spent in an apartment over the past three decades. The street has never been a fatality for him. “I chose my life at the age of 17 by hitting the road”, says this native of northern England. He then wants to see the country; he will see some (Germany, Poland, Spain, etc.), sleeping under bridges, in cabins or under canvas tents, on the tarmac or on cardboard placed over air vents. To earn his living, he becomes seasonal to the rhythm of the harvest and picking periods, and invests in the street show, becoming in turn a juggler, a fire-eater and even “fakir who walks on glass and lies on a nailboard”.
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