It is around sixty pages which denounce the failings of the State. This Monday, November 4, the collective “The other side of the medal” unveils its final report on the “social cleansing” of Paris during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This collective is made up of more than 100 associationsincluding Médecins du monde, ATD Quart Monde and Emmaüs.
20,000 homeless people evicted…
Between April 2023 and September 2024, the collective counted “at least 19,526 people expelled of their place of life” either “a 33% increase compared to the period 2021-2022. These living spaces include slumsgroupings of tryingof the squats“.
“The number of people minors expelled has particularly increase in recent years. At least 4,550 minors were expelled from their informal living space between April 2023 and September 2024, i.e. three times more than over the period 2021-2022 (1,527 minors expelled).
Before the Games, the collective “The reverse of the medal” had requested the opening of 20,000 accommodation places emergency in France including 7.000 in Île-de-France.
…because of the Games?
According to The Other Side of the Medal, there is a direct link between the evictions of homeless people and the organization of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. “Several of these expulsions have been justified by decrees directly evoking Olympic reasons. Near the Games sites, dissuasive measures to avoid the reinstallation of street camps have multiplied.”
For member associations, as the Games approached, expulsions took place in several stages:
- a pause in evictions in June, analyzed by certain associations as a means of “growing” living spaces in order toevacuate as many people as possible more easily just before the Games
- a resumption of expulsions in July, with a acceleration particular during the 10 days before the opening ceremony of the Games (18 expulsions between July 16 and 24, 2024)
- a further slowdown in the pace of expulsions in August, during the Olympic Games […] since the previous expulsions and the police overmobilization have in fact strengthened the dispersion and theinvisibility of people.
Gold medal for “social washing”
Before the Games, the State announced the creation of a dedicated program to the “very precarious” and “largely marginalized” impacted by the organization of the event. “Social washing” according to the collective which judges the work of the State to be insufficient and considers that it gives a misleading image of reality. “Ce device East undersized (3,492 people were recorded as homeless in Paris during Solidarity Night ) […] Pretending that this system of non-reception offers satisfaction and that it is carried out in a humanitarian logic is indeed a matter of social washing.”
According to the collective, the State sought to make people invisible in a situation of great precariousness. “From July 15, 2024, the last camps informal meetings of exiled people, who were in proximity to Olympic venueswere evacuated. Hundreds of people were then temporarily housed in 'buffer sites' in Île-de-France […] The unblocking of these places highlights the capacity of the State to offer this type of solution, but also its desire to do so only in a calculated logic of freeing public space.”
However, in its report, the collective partly recognizes its effectiveness. “Overall, the speakers confirm an exceptional situation within the framework of this program of 256 'very precarious places'with sustainable housing proposals“.
