On huge triangular concrete blocks on Boulevard de la Bastille, placed there to dissuade homeless people from settling there, volunteers from the La Cloche association pose like sprint runners ready on starting blocks. It’s a “slightly playful press conference” that uses the Olympics as a pretext, comments Goli Moussavi, director of a local section of the association, to talk about a subject that makes people laugh less: anti-urban furniture. homeless, still present in Paris and other cities.
Further on Jean-Pierre, volunteer at La Cloche and actor, harangues the crowd of journalists in front of a bench too small to lie down on. Members of the association installed a net there, and here it is transformed for a game of table tennis, while Jean-Pierre declaims: “We are excluded from society, that’s the current policy! Put back normal benches for the homeless, the elderly and pregnant women. »
Public opprobrium
The aim of the association, as well as the Abbé Pierre Foundation, which is participating in the event, is to raise awareness among as many people as possible so that such furniture is no longer installed. “The idea is that they say to themselves it’s not cool whereas before it was not seen as something shameful,” comments Manuel Domergue, of the Abbé Pierre Foundation.
Apart from raising awareness, the associations do not have much control over the authors of these installations, which are mainly businesses and co-owners. Paris City Hall committed in November 2020 to identifying them and carrying out “incentivizing actions” to remove the disputed installations, but today indicates that it “does not have the means to identify all the devices”. “The census is very complicated,” says Léa Filoche, solidarity assistant, who has only received one report on this subject in two years, and indicates having sent a letter to the Haropa Port company ago about three months. The associations also do not have the human resources to contact each owner or business.
For several years, the public opprobrium that accompanies the installation of such furniture has led certain organizations to be more discreet. This is perhaps the case, for example, with this sort of giant basin for putting flowers, but empty, and placed under a porch, in front of which the strollers pass. “When you put a flowerpot, you don’t put it on a porch! This furniture was put there because it is a place where we can put tents,” criticizes Patrice, 52, who spent five months on the street in 2019 and 2020.
Reports via #StopMobilierExcluant
So to make fun, Patrice pretends to light the Olympic flame in this huge cauldron, Gilles – fifteen years on the street under the clock – plays golf with balls placed at the foot of a wall and Bruno transforms a goal into a goal cage. bus shelter, where a bar right in the middle of the seat prevents anyone from lying down. “We should put more energy into providing access to housing in the meantime we must at least have hospitable towns,” comments Manuel Domergue. “We advocate a more welcoming city. Especially since it costs money to install these things that are useless! », adds Goli Moussavi.
Internet users outraged by these practices can report them with the hashtag #StopMobilierExcluant or on lespicsdor.fr. The website serves as a database for the “Golden Peaks” ceremony, which awards a “prize” to the worst anti-homeless people. See you on November 18 to find out the “winner”.
According to Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, the phenomenon is increasing, but difficult to verify. Mike, 26, has in any case no longer been able to sleep near the Palais Royal for almost a year, when “excluding” furniture was installed there. “I sometimes spend an hour and a half or even two hours to find a place to sleep,” he explains. According to The Revers of the Medal, a “social cleansing” is at work in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Nearly 12,500 people were expelled in Ile-de-France in one year, explains the collective in a report published Monday.
