Several mayors and elected officials from large left-wing cities once again sounded the alarm about the fate of street children three days after the official start of winter and urged the Government to act, in a column released this Sunday.
“Mr. Minister, will you maintain your commitment to the children who sleep outdoors?” challenges the mayoress of the EELV of Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, to the leadership of Olivier Klein, head of housing for the Borne government.
This text disseminated on social networks has the support of the mayors of several large cities, all classified to the left, Anne Hidalgo (PS) for Paris, Grégory Doucet (EELV) for Lyon, Eric Piolle (EELV) for Grenoble, Mathieu Klein (PS) for Nancy or even the city councilors of Villeurbanne (Lyon Metropolis) or Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis).
These elected officials judge that the Housing Minister has breached his “commitment” when in September he expressed his “willingness” not to see “children on the street” this winter.
To the contrary, elected officials argue that “hundreds of children sleep in undignified and chaotic conditions.”
In October, the associations for the defense of the homeless had estimated the number of homeless children in France at around 2,000.
200,000 emergency accommodation places open
Some 200,000 emergency accommodation places are open to meet the needs, including 45,000 in Ile-de-France. The drop in temperatures also prompted the launch of the extreme cold plan to accommodate more homeless people in Paris and Ile-de-France and in three other regions, Grand Est, Normandy and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, while 53 departments They have “reinforced Marauders, according to the minister’s entourage.
In Paris, 2,500 people have been sheltered since the scheme was launched on Monday, the same source said. An exhibition center located in the La Villette district in northern Paris was also commandeered overnight from Saturday to Sunday so that marauders could send homeless women and children there. 200 places are available there.
However, these actions continue to be insufficient in the eyes of left-wing elected officials who are asking the State for a “universal plan for the emergency accommodation of all children” ignoring their “administrative situation”, “the sustainable increase” of the means intended for emergency accommodation and “the implementation of a policy of renewal and requisition of housing.”
In October, a dozen left-wing mayors had already campaigned to reject the reduction in the number of emergency accommodation places in 2023.
Source: BFM TV
