The device raises concerns and questions. As the Rugby World Cup approaches this fall and the Olympic Games in 2024, the government wants to encourage thousands of homeless people, mainly migrants, to leave the Paris region for the provinces, arguing decrease in the number of hotels willing to accommodate them.
Many hoteliers no longer wish to welcome these precarious public, because they expect an influx of customers during these two sporting events, observed at the beginning of May at the National Assembly the Minister of Housing, Olivier Klein. Nearly 5,000 rooms were thus lost for emergency accommodation, said MP (Modem) Maud Gatel.
Since mid-March, the executive has therefore asked the prefects to create “temporary regional reception areas” in all regions, with the exception of Hauts-de-France and Corsica, in order to “unclog the accommodation centers” from Ile-de-France. People invited to leave are supposed to be cared for for three weeks in these “airlock” before being “oriented”in their new region, “towards the type of accommodation corresponding to their situation”.
The system mainly concerns migrants, many of whom in Ile-de-France live on the streets or in emergency accommodation. However, it does not specifically target them, under the “principle of unconditional welcome”told Agence France-Presse the office of the Minister of Housing.
Designated by the government to host such a reception center, the city of Bruz, (18,000 inhabitants, near Rennes), expressed its dissatisfaction on Tuesday. “We are not in favor of the installation of such an airlock in our municipality, under these conditions which we consider unworthy”, said the mayor, Philippe Salmon (DVG). The Breton town hall criticizes the choice of land, adjoining a railway line and “polluted by hydrocarbons and heavy metals”and affirms that the future occupants of the reception center would not come “by choice”.
Dispersion or welcome?
Since 2021, the government has already put in place a similar system, but focused only on asylum seekers. According to a parliamentary report made public on Tuesday, this system “has demonstrated its usefulness and effectiveness”, but a quarter of those concerned refused to leave Ile-de-France. The report also calls on the State to better coordinate transfers with municipalities, and to better protect local elected officials.
Because these transfers, remind the authors, make “the object of political instrumentalization that led to threats and violence” towards elected officials, which culminated with the recent resignation of the mayor of Saint-Brévin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique).
For the president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors, Pascal Brice, “Welcoming people in good conditions almost everywhere in France rather than on the street in Ile-de-France, in principle, it’s positive, but do we give ourselves the means? ». The problem, notes this association manager, is that“there are no emergency accommodation places” in the host regions, as well as a “political impetus from the Ministry of the Interior for real support work”. Because “if it is a question of putting people on the buses” and not worry about it anymore, “it’s dispersion, not reception”according to him.
Eric Constantin, head of the Abbé Pierre Foundation in Ile-de-France, says he doubts, for his part, that we can “find dignified and decent solutions in three weeks” to bring people reoriented to the regions out of precariousness on a long-term basis. One can, moreover, “to be surprised at the concordance between the arrival of the Olympic Games and a program which aims to send migrants to the provinces”adds Mr. Constantin, who wonders whether the government wanted to ensure “that there are no more camps before millions of people arrive in France”.