– More than 150 homeless people evacuated from a gym in Lyon
More than 150 homeless people, mainly women and children, occupied a gymnasium in Lyon on Friday evening to denounce the lack of emergency accommodation, before being evacuated by the police.
Families occupy a cultural center in Villeurbanne, in central France, on November 9, 2023 (illustrative photo).
AFP
Around 170 people, “nearly half of whom are children”, settled at the end of the day in a municipal gymnasium with the idea of staying there while the authorities found solutions to accommodate them, explained a door -speech of the Solidarity between Women on the Street collective.
“We spent the winter outside and we’ve been sleeping in the rain for a week. We can’t take it anymore,” explained the collective in a press release. “We know that the gymnasium is not sustainable, we know that it prevents activities, but we need accommodation,” he added.
“At the request of the town hall”, municipal and national police officers were immediately dispatched to the site to “ask” these approximately 150 people “to leave the premises”, indicated for its part the prefecture. Shortly after 11 p.m. (Friday), the evacuation was complete, she added.
“No space”
Before occupying the gymnasium, the group demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the Métropole de Lyon to demand “concrete actions” “in the face of the lack of accommodation and housing”.
“I’ve been outside for four months. We sleep at (the) Perrache station, here and there. Sometimes our clothes are stolen from where we sleep,” Jeanne, 46, present in the assembly, told AFP.
“I have a social worker in the mainland, a social worker in the city, a social worker with my son’s college, and I am in two associations. But it’s always the same answer, ‘there are a lot of people here and there’s no room,'” added a 39-year-old mother, accompanied by her two children aged 12 and 15, on condition of anonymity. years.
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