In the middle of the winter break, women and mothers isolated on the street from the accommodation collective 93, who have been fighting for months for their right to accommodation and social support, are continuing their mobilization. They face the greatest contempt from the city of Saint-Denis which persists and refuses to requisition empty housing and to provide the slightest administrative support for their efforts.
This scandalous situation of great violence is part of the gentrification and anti-social policies implemented for years by the socialist mayor of the commune, Matthieu Hanontin, but also of general repression by the State in a context of saturation of emergency accommodation and repressive leap against the rights of immigrants.
Dozens of women and mothers isolated on the street for several months in Saint-Denis
Last Friday, around fifteen isolated women and mothers from the 93 accommodation collective took to the streets again alongside collectives of undocumented immigrants, unaccompanied minors from Belleville and even Chronopost workers recently expelled from their picket line. strike after three years of historic struggle, to denounce the new attacks by the Barnier government against immigrants and demand the regularization of all undocumented immigrants. Among them, Bintou, a mother isolated on the street with her three minor children for years and who gets nothing from her calls to 115, the emergency number to obtain accommodation: “ We are here because our situation has not changed for months. Still no news from 115 and the town hall which refuses to listen to us and requisition empty housing. I have had refugee status since 2021, a ten-year card, and have taken all possible steps to obtain housing for myself and my three children. In the meantime, we continue to sleep outside, in the parking lot of Delafontaine hospital every night, in the cold with my son who is disabled. ».
Bintou is one of around thirty pregnant and/or isolated families and women, on the street and still waiting for emergency accommodation through 115 for months, and who, united within the collective, are fighting for accommodation 93 since last August, have decided to make their voices heard and forcefully denounce the extremely precarious conditions imposed on them by the State. Most are undocumented, their asylum application rejected or awaiting regularization with the prefecture. These mothers, pregnant women or single women combine medical vulnerabilities and situations of exploitation and sexist and sexual violence, and still survive near the parking lot of the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis where several of them are followed .
To spend the winter, they had taken refuge in the entrance hall, but had come under pressure from the hospital management who effectively put several women who had just left the maternity ward back on the street. Expelled from their shelter last April, they decided in the middle of the Olympics to organize to fight collectively for their dignity and their right to housing. With the support of several midwife workers at the hospital, united and outraged by their situations and the treatment reserved by the hospital management, they have been increasing demonstrations and mobilizations for three months. Their objective: to extract dignified and stable housing solutions, in particular through the requisition of empty housing as well as domiciliation and social monitoring for them and their children.
“The town hall refused me, sending me to Emmaüs in Montreuil”
« As we are on the street, we have no address and no safe place to receive our mail. However, without an address, we cannot complete our housing, schooling for children or even state medical aid procedures. », specifies Hawa, one of the women in the collective. “ This is why we went as a delegation to the CCAS of Saint-Denis to obtain an address as the law allows us to do as we live in the town. On site, the town hall categorically refused to study our request, indicating that as we are on the street and without accommodation, we cannot prove our link to the territory. »
This practice of the town hall is quite simply illegal: administrative domiciliation falls within the compulsory powers of the CCAS and allows any person without a stable home to benefit from an address, as long as they have a link with the municipality. This illustrates the scandalous policy pursued by the town hall of St Denis which consists of refusing to accommodate poor and undocumented people on the street. It is a conscious attempt to push ever more precariousness and the most exploited people to the gates of the city where almost 36% of residents live below the poverty line.
This refusal of domiciliation will delay by several weeks the steps that the women of the collective had taken to try to obtain emergency accommodation by filing DAHO appeals under the enforceable right to accommodation. “ We have been sleeping in front of Delafontaine for months, we are followed in hospital by doctors, our children go to school in the city. How can the town hall say that we have no ties to the city? We are despised by the city because we are foreign women without papers and on the street, » says Kady, one of the spokespersons for the collective, who will end up obtaining a domicile with a city association like most women.
Same story in response to requests for social monitoring, which the municipality simply refuses. Nancy, a single mother whose asylum request was rejected and on the street in front of Delafontaine with her two children attending school in the town and her youngest daughter, barely three years old, suffering from asthma who has had multiple visits to the emergency room in Delafontaine testifies: “ I have been alone with my three children on the street for months, sleeping on boxes in the parking lot near the hospital. I am sick, my children are sick. I went to the town hall several times to try to get social support for me and my children. The town hall refused me, sending me with a paper to Emmaüs in Montreuil ».
During a new meeting between the collective and Hanotin's cabinet this Tuesday, the municipal team of the socialist mayor once again categorically refused to respond to the requests of the spokespersons of the collective present with several workers from Delafontaine. For the simple fact of their mobilization to obtain social monitoring and the requisition of empty housing, the collective was even accused by the mayor's office of ” implement a real policy of harassment towards city officials “. A particularly undignified victim posture in the face of the contempt that the town hall has been showing to the collective's demands for months.
Emergency accommodation in Seine-Saint-Denis: between saturation and indignity
Faced with the absence of requisitioning of empty housing by the town hall, which the city is full of, there is no chance of counting on emergency accommodation systems either. These are totally saturated at the department level, as indicated by the Interlogement 93 platform: “ The daily average of calls received and processed in the 1st quarter of 2024 remains extremely alarming. 96% of households in street situations who made a request to 115-93 during the quarter did not receive any shelter offer ».
A chilling figure, reflecting the increase in the number of people kept on the streets in recent years, going hand in hand with the increase in administrative repression and social precariousness imposed on immigrants and undocumented people by successive governments. . When places are available, they are often in unstable social hotels, sometimes characterized by great indignity and unsanitary conditions, as evidenced by the women of the accommodation collective 93.
Last October, Aminata denounced in a video: “ I spent four months on the street. 115 housed me for two weeks. The two weeks are over. They had another place for me but it wasn't stable for me and my son, because there were cockroaches and bedbugs in the room. When I told 115 that I couldn't go there because my son is sick, I was told that they couldn't offer me anything else, but only to return to the hotel room where conditions are difficult. I am forced to return to the street with my son due to the lack of a stable solution. » Unacceptable conditions imposed on families on the street, which particularly affect immigrant and undocumented families and which serve as a reminder that in Saint-Denis, while millions were spent on the Olympics and exceptional police measures, around 20 % of housing is deemed “potentially unsanitary” by the municipality->https://ville-saint-denis.fr/lutte-contre-habitat-insalubre].
Faced with the displayed contempt of the city and the anti-social policies of Hanotin, the women of the accommodation collective 93 are determined to maintain a balance of power with the town hall to win through the struggle the requisition of empty housing, dignified housing solutions on the city as well as social monitoring and their regularizations. As such, their fight and their demands must be the subject of a broad front of political, union and associative support like that provided by the Raised Fist activists and the Collective of Foreign Students who are setting up French lessons in Paris 8 for a few weeks. For their part, lawyers from the Judicial Action Collective offer legal support to access emergency accommodation. In support of the women of the Hébergement 93 collective, let us demand the requisition of empty accommodation, an end to all attacks xenophobic and racist actions of the government against immigrants and the regularization of all undocumented immigrants!
