The government is giving up cutting places in emergency accommodation for homeless people in 2023, as it had planned so far, the Minister Delegate for the City and Housing Olivier Klein announced to AFP on Friday.
“After a lot of work between the government and the government majority, we decided to re-enter 40 million euros in the 2023 budget on emergency accommodation. This corresponds to a stabilization of the number of places for the year 2023. So the reduction which was announced is cancelled, ”said the minister.
This announcement comes as ten socialist and environmental mayors of large cities on Thursday denounced the announced closure of accommodation places in a letter to Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, deeming these “pure and simple outcasts” “intolerable”. This closure had also made the associations helping the poorly housed jump.
Nearly 198,000 places
There will eventually be between 197,000 and 198,000 places open in 2023, Klein promised. Until then, the executive, which had increased the number of places in emergency accommodation to 200,000 during the pandemic, envisaged in its draft budget to finance only 193,000 at the end of 2022 and 186,000 at the end of 2023.
“In the current situation, particularly given our desire not to leave a child on the street, it seemed important to us to have this consideration of the situation and to remain at the same level”, he said. declared. These will be maintained all year round, unlike the “thermometer management”, practiced before 2019, which consisted of eliminating places after the winter break, he also promised.
“The government’s desire is above all not to resume management of emergency accommodation by thermometer, and this position does not call into question the government’s priority of moving towards a new five-year plan for the housing first, because our goal is to get people off the streets. »