LThe 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games (OPG) were a success in every way, including their social dimension. Far from the accusations of “social cleansing”the coordinated action between the decentralized State, local authorities and associations has made it possible to provide shelter to many homeless people.
Considerable work has been done to anticipate the situation for people coming to shower, eat or receive social support in day centres. With the will and the means, we can collectively meet immense challenges as long as we anticipate and act with humanity.
This enchanted interlude of public action must not mask a much more worrying reality for people in precarious situations, but also for society as a whole. Because nothing has been resolved fundamentally.
Freezing of credits
There are more and more homeless people in the country. The number of shelter places is stagnating at a historically high level. However, there are still more than two thousand children on the streets, more than 4.2 million people suffer from poor housing and the construction of social housing is at an all-time low.
However, the last ministerial announcement on the matter, which aimed to create ten thousand additional accommodation places, was immediately abandoned due to the freezing of credits. Without anticipation of needs, without political courage or an overall vision of the failures of social policies (child welfare, justice, youth, employment, access to housing, etc.) which throw thousands of people onto the streets, France is inexorably seeing the re-creation of numerous, undignified and unsanitary camps and shanty towns.
Drug use is increasing in the country. The latest report from the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Trends (OFDT) shows that illicit drug use has never been higher in France. Crack is wreaking havoc on the most vulnerable, because it is a cheap stimulant that helps people cope with the violence on the streets. Political communication is focusing on the security issue by increasing the number of “clean-up” operations, which do not solve anything: the price of a gram of cocaine has not changed due to seizures, because it is so abundant.
More and more young people are suffering
Public health issues are only addressed by local state representatives and the most courageous elected officials, they must be commended because thanks to them hundreds of people have access to care and many manage to regulate their consumption. But, without an overall vision of the issue of addictions in general, entire neighborhoods will continue, one after the other, to be subjected to trafficking, and associations will struggle to treat those who fall into consumption and in particular the most precarious, due to the lack of health ambition of public policies.
You have 60.76% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.