This article is open access.
To stay true to its values, your newspaper has chosen not to finance itself with advertising. This is the only guarantee of truly independent information. This choice has a cost, too, to contribute and support our independence:
buy Politis,
subscribe.
–
–
C’is a joke! We are in a communist town hall, with nine elected La France insoumise, and it feels like Macronie ”, loose Thomas, resident of the EIF squat. It has been two hours since he occupied the hall of the town hall of Montreuil (93) with about twenty other residents of abandoned habitats or disused places and activists from the Association of the poorly housed to speak to an elected official, and request an appointment to establish an anti-eviction order, which would protect the hundreds of people threatened by the end of the winter truce.
Seine-Saint-Denis holds the record for the number of rental evictions in France, and the poverty rate reached 25% in 2019 in Montreuil. Due to gentrification, soaring rents through real estate speculation and years of waiting to obtain public housing, a growing population is occupying vacant housing, even disused premises, so as not to sleep on the streets.
Long combat
The Association of the poorly housed and the inhabitants of the squats have been gathering for years in front of the town hall during municipal councils, to demand anti-eviction orders. Facing them, Patrice Bessac, Communist mayor (PCF), applies the method of expulsion, without a proposal for rehousing. “The marker between the right and the left is social dialogue, says Fahima, 59, a former resident of the Hermitage squat, a vacant town-owned house. However, for three years, they have refused any mediation to make a precarious lease, the time they have a project for the place. »
On March 30, they were again about thirty, gathered under a makeshift marquee, to stand in front of the town hall, trying to ignore the dozen police officers and the cars deployed around the square a few meters from them. The next day, after enduring the cold, the rain and receiving a fine for installing barnums, the activists officially file a request for a meeting with the mayor.
See you April 5
1is April, the urgency of their demands got the better of their immobility. After two hours of waiting in a deserted hall, the activists massed at the entrance to the building, brandishing a banner “Assembly of the poorly housed” and making their demands loudly heard. After five minutes of uproar, the mayor’s chief of staff, Gautier de Mollière, comes down to meet them.
From the outset, he claims not to have been aware of the request filed the day before, nor of the claims made on the square since Wednesday. “We learned about the gathering via social networks. We rather thought that your event was to inform people about the idea of an anti-eviction order”, he says. In office since June 2020, he “does not believe that he has ever received requests for an appointment for an anti-eviction order since [sa] Position taking. » He also asserts “not having asked for the evacuation of the place” while an activist answers him “the removal of barnums and electricity, while it was snowing, it was the town hall that requested it, the police told us”.
When the activists denounce the lack of response from the town hall, the elected official affirms “that we do not evict anyone without having done our utmost to rehouse them”. An insufficient response for Fahima, who lives in the La Baudrière squat: “I no longer live in fear, but in survival”.
The two parties finally agree on a meeting on April 5 in the early afternoon, with the elected housing representative, Stephan Beltran. On the agenda, a discussion on an anti-eviction order and on individual situations. The activists nevertheless insist on the fact that they are asking for general support, and not only for those who will represent the assembly of the poorly housed.
When the activists evacuated the premises, the director of cabinet, ill at ease, explained the position of the municipality: “We did not want to open the subject of an anti-eviction order internally, because on the one hand there are the tenants of social parks, whom we are already helping. And on the other, the squatters, for whom this mode of housing is sometimes a political position. If we issue an anti-eviction order, it is for both cases. But among the squats, some do not belong to the town hall, others like EIF are polluted. It’s complex. They have the right to come and demonstrate, but we have the right not to accede to their demands. »
–
