Will Parisian users of crack and other drugs soon be able to seek treatment in Auteuil? In this quiet and upscale district of 16e district, a medical accommodation center for drug addicts is in principle about to be set up in a disused wing of the Chardon-Lagache hospital. The project “was the subject of a unanimously favorable opinion”, indicates the regional health agency (ARS) of Ile-de-France. He has then “intended to be retained”. A ” very good news “according to Anne Souyris, Anne Hidalgo’s health ecologist assistant, delighted that the bourgeois districts of western Paris, anchored on the right, are participating in the “territorial solidarity”. But Francis Szpiner, Les Républicains (LR) mayor of the borough and candidate for the legislative elections, hopes to derail the project. He just started a petition to that effect. Friday, May 27, just under 5,000 people had signed it.
An emblematic affair of the resistance encountered by projects intended for the excluded of all kinds, in particular in Paris. The last few months have shown this forcefully. The rooms planned to accommodate crack addicts, this particularly addictive “poor man’s drug”? The town hall of Paris had planned four locations. But, as soon as the first address was unveiled, in the Pelleport district (20e district), the outcry was so powerful that the file was dropped, and the three others with it. The transfer of the drug addict camp from Porte de la Villette to a railway wasteland at 12e ? Two and a half days after announcing it, the prefect of police Didier Lallement had to give it up in the face of virulent opposition from left and right.
The reception center for the homeless planned by the Salvation Army at the bottom of a building in Saint-Fargeau (20e) does not seem much better off. Faced with the categorical refusal of the co-owners, who had not been consulted, the Protestant organization put its project on hold, even if it meant paying 25,000 euros per month in rent for unused premises… The works planned for January have still not not started. “They call us ‘fachos’ because we are hostile to this project, but that’s not the case, comments Jean-Félix Vallat, the spokesperson for a collective which brings together around 40 out of 85 co-owners. It’s just that you can’t have the elderly, couples with children and a marginal population that poses security problems cohabit just anyhow. And then, you have to respect the law: you can only change the destination of a building with the unanimous agreement of the co-owners. »
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