“I who have died many times, here I live again”joke Pierrot, 65 years old. ” Right here “it’s a studio in the Floréal boarding house, right in the 14and arrondissement of Paris, managed by the Emmaüs Solidarité association, where Pierrot moved in October 2021. “I have my key, my mailbox, I am safe and, above all, I reconnected with my son Johnny”, 45 years old today, of whom he had not heard from for almost thirty years and who gave him the T-shirt that he never takes off. His thousand deaths was a serious moped accident, at the age of 17, which shattered his head, and, since then, a chaotic life throughout Europe, various jobs in Brussels, Toulouse, Nice, Madrid , in Luxembourg, and times when he happened to go through the trash, sleep in the underground passages of the Forum des Halles, navigate from hostel to accommodation centre…
His neighbor and friend, Pierre, 62, arrived in July 2019, almost three years ago. “I was a senior computer technician when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and I had to take care of her”, he confides. Sick in his turn, he never resumed his activity and finds, in this boarding house, a refuge after a stay in a therapeutic foster family: “It’s fantastic, I’m completely independent but not isolated, there’s a good atmosphere. »
Both pay, for their 18 to 25 square meters, a monthly rent of 170 euros, unbeatable in Paris, in a bourgeois district where nothing is missing.
Indefinite length of stay
“The family pension is a reception facility for isolated people – contrary to its name – which is unanimousunderlines Bruno Morel, director of Emmaus Solidarity, which manages about twenty in the Paris region. It is a building on a human scale, with 25 to 30 studios and vast collective spaces, dining room, meeting room, kitchen. It is discreet and carefree for the neighborhood, since local residents sometimes do not even notice its presence. »
This is the case of the Floréal pension, a Haussmannian building on which not even a plaque betrays its vocation. “There is a collective life, but never compulsory. A couple of hosts live on site, provide reception, social support, joint lunches, volunteers lead workshops, provide cultural, sporting and recreational outings for those who wish. »
Tenants have a lease which entitles them to housing allowance. They can furnish the place as they wish and stay as long as they want without risk of being thrown out. The length of stay is generally five years. Some leave, others end their lives there.
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