French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is reportedly deporting thousands of homeless migrants by bus from Paris ahead of the Olympics.
Some of the displaced migrants say they were falsely promised homes in other cities to lure them onto the buses.
Macron’s problem is that the Olympic Village was built in Seine-Saint-Denis, a notoriously sleazy, overcrowded and crime-ridden suburb of Paris. Le Monde Explained The construction of the Olympic Village took six years and the village site was renovated at enormous cost, being a “collection of former industrial ruins.”
The Village itself was touted as a marvel of “sustainable” development, with more than 2,800 homes, 80,000 square metres of office space, and enough shops and parks to accommodate around 24,000 athletes and support personnel for the duration of the Olympics.
One of the chiefs The design goal is To give permission The goal is to ensure that athletes can sleep, eat, and relax within minutes of their training facilities. Another goal is to meet the stringent requirements of the Paris Climate Agreement, which calls for ample land area to be allocated for parks, fountains, and pools, and mandates the extensive use of low-carbon and recycled building materials.
French authorities clearly hoped that the $1.85 billion pumped into the Olympic Village would revitalize the surrounding area, turning a “no-go zone” into a “welcome zone,” said Matthieu Anotan, mayor of Seine-Saint-Denis. put that On the left The New York Times (The New York Times) During February.
“Nearby areas of dilapidated social housing are being refurbished and new roads, bridges, cycle paths, parks and schools are being added. There is also the promise of bringing jobs and training opportunities to local people in an area where unemployment is persistent. The only question surrounding this lofty ambition is: will it work?” The New York Times Asked.
So far, the answer seems to be “not really.” The New York Times In a bad mood report French authorities said on Thursday they had shoved large numbers of homeless migrant men living around the Olympic Village onto buses and transported them inconspicuously to other towns for the duration of the Games.
Even more depressing, The New York Times The French government admitted to lying about clearing the homeless from the streets. French officials claimed the busing was a voluntary program to move the homeless to swanky new dormitories far from the Olympic Village, but… The New York Times An email review of a government housing official revealed that the official was “identifying people on the streets near the Olympic sites” and ordering them to leave the town.
This was a tall order, since there are currently about 100,000 homeless people in Paris and about a third of the population of Seine-Saint-Denis are migrants. Some of the relocated homeless people say they were tricked into boarding the buses with false promises of long-term housing. Others say they were advised by lawyers not to board the migrant buses because they risked deportation if they did so voluntarily.
of The New York Times We sent journalists to follow some of the migrant buses closely and found that they were not, in fact, ferrying willing migrants to new long-term housing projects in other cities. Most of the men turned away from the Olympic Village found shelters in other cities full and with even fewer job opportunities than in Paris.
President Joe Biden Immigration disaster In the United States, other French cities complained that they did not have the resources to care for the thousands of immigrants who had been expelled from Paris. Some discouraged immigrants tried to return to Paris but found their homes occupied or sealed off by the authorities, so they had no choice but to break into shelters or other buildings.
“The city says they don’t want to see tents and homeless people on the streets during the Olympics, but we’re not bad people. They want to send us to clean up Paris, but what will we do in the countryside? It’s not a solution,” said Arseny, a young migrant from Guinea. Said of The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) on friday.
Arseny said he was one of around 400 migrants who were arrested by police in March, taken by bus to a Paris gymnasium and told they would be transferred to temporary shelters in France to help them escape the capital during the Olympics. City authorities insisted they were being evacuated because of the risk of flooding along the Seine.
CSM He noted that Paris is just the latest Olympic city to put on a good show by clearing the streets of nuisance homeless people and immigrants, with the vague promise that the rich revenues from the Olympics will help create jobs and better housing in the future. But it never seems to work out that way.
Ahead of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver authorities created a network of temporary shelters but were heavily criticised for keeping homeless people out of sight; a year later, the homeless were back on the streets, says Dr Kennelly. Apartments built in the Olympic Village to provide affordable housing after the games ended ended up costing too much for low-income earners. London suffered a similar fate in 2012 with its East London renovation and Olympic Village, but its low-income ambitions were never realised.
“There’s a naive idea among authorities that if we build more houses, everything will magically work out,” says Paul Watt, visiting professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, “but that’s just distorting the politics.”
French non-profit organisations expressed outrage at Utopia56. Condemned It issued a statement condemning a wave of unrest in Paris in April that it called “social cleansing”. The group said that contrary to official promises, many of the homeless people who were relocated from Paris had not been provided with “permanent housing solutions”.
“The people affected by social cleansing measures are large and there will be a continuing need for access to social services and support. If Paris wants to be a great city this summer, it cannot be at the expense of the most precarious people,” Utopia 56 said.
