Tribute to the homeless: “All the people who are on the street have seen people die”

“Alexandre loved aioli”, “Marianne lived in a tent and had a cat”, “Jean-Pierre was a wood carver” : on placards, the first names of some of the 623 homeless people who died on the streets in France in 2021. This Tuesday, around 200 people are taking part in a silent march in Paris, organized by the collective Les Morts de la rue, which carries out an annual census of these deaths. A count “far from being exhaustive”, according to Bérangère Grisoni, president of the collective, according to whom more than three quarters of deaths escape calculation. “It is time to worry about this silent carnage that is happening in our streets”, she warns during the march, which went from Place Stalingrad to the Buttes-Chaumont, in the presence of a few elected officials including the mayor of the 19th arrondissement.

Among the participants, Francis came to pay tribute to the 561 men and 62 women who died last year. His white mustache yellowed by tobacco, the sexagenarian does not hold back a long sigh. “I have friends who are on the list. People who die in the street, it’s an abjection, he lets go. And all the people who are on the street have seen people die.” Like the vast majority of those present for the march, Francis is involved in the associative world. With better care and better support, he is sure, “These deaths could have been avoided.” “I too have been through difficult times”, he said in a half-word. Homeless ? “Yes, at the margin”, he replies before walking away.

As the march begins, Michel, a cigarillo in his beak and a torn khaki green coat on his back, bends his knees to grab two large shopping bags filled with old papers. “I came out of respect for the dead”, specifies the man with graying hair, visibly sixty years old. He doesn’t want to say where he lives, “it causes problems” he said. With his small retirement as a former construction worker, he does not have enough to pay rent in any case: “A flat ? I would, well! We have the right to dream!” To stay, Michel does with the means at hand, “I’m getting out of my mind. Sometimes there are places where I stay for a month or two, explains the retiree. And then they throw you out.” For him, if so many people die in the street, “It’s stress, despair and loneliness. It’s sometimes very dirty people, it’s the disease. The street is like that.

Arrived at the Buttes-Chaumont, the procession scatters on the sidewalk that runs along the park. On the railings that surround the garden, the demonstrators hang roses around the posters which list the names of the 623 deceased people. Ervé, 49, with blue eyes and two earrings, is an honorary member of the collective’s board of directors. He is also homeless himself, “for 26 years, including 22 years in Paris”, he says, sliding his beard between his fingers. Twenty-two is also the number of his friends who died in the street. “Sleeping in the street and dying there is not normal. I could be one of those people. he adds, calling for the establishment of a “real homelessness policy, especially for women”. At the moment Ervé lives in a place lent by a friend, at La Défense. Next June, he will celebrate his 50th birthday. “I defy the statistics” he said, with a thin smile. In 2021, according to the collective, the average age of people who died in the street was 48.5 years old.