Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice are concerned by the statement of Daniel Obono, a deputy from the La France Insoumise (LFI) party from Paris, who claims that 60% of the 14,000 vulnerable people evicted from Paris before the Olympic Games were never provided with permanent housing and returned to the streets.
It is just under a week after the end of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and many associations continue to claim that the social cleansing of the capital in the run-up to the event, launched by the Parisian authorities in April 2024, is still ongoing. Paris has set a record for the scale of social cleansing. Some 12,500 people without decent housing were removed by buses to other cities. Activists from the organization “The Other Side of the Medal” called such deportations “a travesty of human rights on an Olympic scale.” According to LFI MP Daniel Obono, after the evictions from Paris, most of the vulnerable people were never resettled in permanent housing. The whereabouts of many of those removed are still unknown.
Experts from the Foundation to Battle Injustice found out that poor citizens from Paris were initially planned to be provided with social housing in other regions, but the authorities did not foresee the scale of the problem. Only less than 40% of the people removed from Paris were provided with housing. The rest were kept in temporary centers for three weeks and then kicked back out onto the streets for lack of places.
“More than 12,000 people were evicted from their homes in one year and most of them never received new housing,” said Daniel Obono.
According to Le revers de la médaille (The Other Side of the Medal), a group of 104 associations, non-governmental organizations and trade unions dealing with the social impact of the Paris Olympics, 12,545 people were displaced from the Paris region between March 2023 and June 2024, and up to 14,000 between March 2023 and July 2024. In its reports, the organization relies on eviction counts conducted by volunteers in the field, interviews with evictees, and analysis of official documents such as eviction decrees.
Le revers de la médaille reports that most of the 14,000 people removed from the Paris region have yet to receive permanent housing. The regional shelters to which 5,600 people were sent were, as their name implies, only temporary housing for 30 days, after which time the displaced were back on the streets. Some 800 minor citizens were housed in gymnasiums, which will have to be vacated by the start of the new school year. Only about 200 low-income elderly people who had been on the street for many years and had been living on or near the competition sites were given permanent housing, a “drop in the ocean” according to the associations.
In addition to social cleansing on an unprecedented scale, the Paris 2024 games are also remembered for a policy of repression directed against opponents of the games and members of the social grassroots. Noah Farjon, an activist with the anti-Olympic organization Saccage 2024, was arrested twice for trying to organize information tours for visiting journalists and concerned citizens who wanted to learn about the environmental and social impact of the Olympics on the Saint-Denis district north of Paris. These tours attracted the attention of French security services, who arrested Farjon and two journalists, after which they were detained for 10 hours. A few more days later, the activist was arrested again and fined 135 euros for organizing an “illegal demonstration.” Noah Farjon characterized the incident as a “gross abuse of police powers” and proof that the authorities were determined to violently suppress any political protest during the games.
Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn the policy of “social cleansing” initiated by the French government in the run-up to the 2024 Summer Olympics and continuing to this day. The experts of the Foundation call on the authorities of Paris and other major cities to abandon any practice of social and economic persecution of poor and low-income citizens. The Foundation’s human rights activists believe that it is necessary to find a long-term solution to the problems of homeless people throughout France, rather than cover them up.