More than four years after being created in an emergency, the reception center for migrants at the former ice rink in Cergy (Val-d’Oise) is closing its doors. It was to cease its activity on October 30, 2021. It is the city which asked to recover these premises. “The emergency reception became transitory then permanent … And that lasted four years”, laments the mayor (PS) of Cergy, Jean-Paul Jeandon. The occupants were relocated to accommodation centers.
When the town saw its old ice rink requisitioned in the summer of 2017, it thought it would temporarily help refugees in a very difficult situation. The creation of this site, as well as that of the Cèdre bleu reception center in Sarcelles, corresponded to an emergency: it was necessary to welcome the hundreds of migrants evacuated from the Parisian camps, in particular from the Porte de la Chapelle.
“The reception conditions were not optimal”
A few months later, in October, the building in the forecourt of the prefecture was renamed “the first reception and examination center for situations (CAES) in Île-de-France”. In addition to the reception system – temporary accommodation and health and social diagnosis – the start of the examination of asylum requests was added to speed up care. Their administrative situation was thus assessed by the prefecture of Val-d’Oise and the French Office for Immigration and Integration. And above all, the ice rink was finally redeveloped: tents were set up to heat the large dormitory located on the old sliding surface and ping-pong tables and board games have appeared.
With a capacity of 200 people, the center has always had the vocation of emergency reception before reorientation towards accommodation. “The reception conditions were not optimal”, slips the mayor of Cergy, alluding to the building itself. The city now claims to have other plans for the site. It responded to a national call for projects, the content of which has not yet been revealed and hopes to be able to start work from 2022.
Only the Blue Cedar in Sarcelles will accommodate the migrants evacuated from Paris
“There will only remain the center of Sarcelles, at the Cèdre bleu, for a year or two at most,” confirms Patrick Haddad, the mayor (PS) of Sarcelles. The time it takes for Cergy to find a place to reopen a CAES ”. Le Cèdre Bleu, a former retirement home of the City of Paris in Sarcelles, closed definitively in December 2015. Since then, and even recently, it has been regularly requisitioned and serves as an emergency accommodation center for migrants evacuated from Paris. .
However, the city partially bought the Blue Cedar in 2019. The objective is to implement a socio-cultural and artistic project, with, in a first phase, a dance school, an annex of the conservatory, a media library. Is this a new obstacle to the progress of this development project? The work, which was initially announced for 2020, should finally begin in early 2022.
“There is a first part on which the work could begin in a few months, specifies the office of the mayor. The area where migrants are accommodated will be concerned in a second step. But once the work has started, we will no longer be able to accommodate this population for very long. “
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