The team of the Parisian cultural establishment sends an open letter to the mayor of Paris in which it asks her to urgently take charge of the rehousing of the 250 young people who have been installed in its premises since December 10.
Madam Mayor of Paris,
As you know, since December 10, 250 people from all walks of life and without housing solutions, gathered in the Belleville Park Youth Collective, have occupied the spaces of the Gaîté lyrique, a cultural venue of the City of Paris. We deplore the sudden and sudden nature of this occupation, but we share the demand of these people to obtain shelter, as is their right.
Today, after a week, no solution has been envisaged, incidents are increasing, fatigue and the unsuitability of spaces are weighing more every day and creating multiple tensions. We deplore this lack of dialogue between State services and those of the City of Paris. This inaction clearly endangers the people accommodated and leaves the teams to face the situation alone, without any timetable for resolution. Under no circumstances is Gaîté lyrique competent and does not have the spaces and sanitary means to offer an accommodation solution with respect and human dignity.
The 250 young people are still at the Gaîté lyrique, in more than unsuitable reception conditions despite all the help of the local teams and associations who are doing their best to provide them with assistance, food and medical monitoring. Must the competent authorities be so ineffective and incapable of reaching an agreement that civil society, in this case represented by cultural actors, is forced to manage this situation alone? What a bitter observation to see in an impasse, the team of a cultural place which works on a daily basis in the service of the City of Paris, to give full meaning to this establishment, for the general interest, to defend the values of equality, hospitality, respect for people.
La Gaîté lyrique is alone, and forced to choose between its regulatory obligation as a concessionaire of this place and its moral duty, that of not throwing these people into the street, in the middle of December, when temperatures are around 0 °. This is unthinkable for us. Should we wait until the situation deteriorates further, or until there are victims, before inaction stops?
Because the question is not “logistical”. We know, and the Paris town hall teams have confirmed this to us on numerous occasions, that there are places to accommodate these young people, empty high schools, gymnasiums that can be used. The capital has no shortage of vacant premises. And how can we imagine that it would not be able to urgently accommodate 250 young people when it was able to do so to brilliantly welcome more than 11 million people barely three months ago, for the Olympic and Paralympic Games?
No, the question is not logistical. She is political. And we hear the same speech every day: “the pressure is not strong enough on the State”, “the balance of power is not tense enough”, “we must make the State which does not take its responsibilities”. The State says the same thing, passing the buck to the City of Paris and we have lost hope that it will intervene to find a rehousing solution.
Everyone ends up conceding that these young people housed at the Gaîté lyrique have the misfortune of being, even constituting… a legal void. They are neither under the responsibility – we dare say the protection – of the State, nor under that of the Paris town hall. So both parties pass the buck, waiting for the other to give in. It is no longer time to know who is right and who is wrong. It is not your legal responsibility that the Gaîté lyrique team is appealing to, Madam Mayor of Paris, but rather your moral demands.
Signatories:
Juliette Donadieu, general director of Gaîté lyrique; Vincent Carry, general director of Arty Farty & president of Gaîté lyrique; Boris Reason, editorial director Arte France; Alizée Lozac’hmeur, co-founder of Makesense; Benoît Hamon, Managing Director Singa Global; Françoise Nyssen, chairwoman of the supervisory board of Actes sud; Anne-Sylvie Bameule, president of the board of directors of Actes sud
