Paris waging war on homelessness ahead of the 2024 Olympics

The French authorities are intensifying efforts to remove homeless people from the streets of Paris. Actions initiated at the beginning of the year are becoming increasingly drastic. Thousands of homeless immigrants are being packed into buses and transported to other cities.

The New York Times described on Thursday the latest action to relegate the homeless from Paris ahead of the Olympic Games. Immigrants told the newspaper that the authorities brought buses to a squat in an old cement factory.

To all those who decided to board, they were promised accommodation elsewhere. As a result, people were taken and dropped off approximately 80 kilometres from Paris. But they ended up back on the streets.

Paris declared a war on homelessness back in April of last year. The police and city services catalogued the sites where people were living on the streets, but during this cleanup, actions are also being taken to eliminate illegal sex service locations.

Actions in Paris aim to improve the city's image. The Olympic Village, where athletes from around the world will stay, was built in one of the poorest suburbs of Paris. Thousands live in street encampments, shelters, or abandoned buildings.

In the past year, the police and courts have evicted 12,000 people from the city. "We were expelled because of the Olympic Games," said Mohamed Ibrahim from Chad, who was evicted from an abandoned cement factory near the Olympic village. A bus took his group approximately 80 kilometres southwest to a town near Orléans.

Among those relocated are asylum seekers, as well as families and children in challenging situations.

The organisation Le Revers de la Médaille, which monitors the relocation of the homeless and represents 90 associations, stated that at least 20,000 housing units are needed across France. In the Île-de-France region alone, 7,000 units are required to provide a long-term solution to homelessness.

Paul Alauzy, a health monitoring coordinator at Médecins du Monde, accused the authorities of "social cleansing" against the city's most vulnerable population. "They are hiding the misery under the rug," the activist added.

The authorities have mandated smaller cities to create "temporary reception centres." Some towns, like the 18,000-strong Bruz near Rennes, have protested.

Local officials complain that there is a lack of temporary accommodation places. The government only provided buses without ensuring there would be places to house the people who were transported. Some homeless individuals return to Paris on their own, so this cleanup of the capital proves ineffective in the long run.