The prefect of Val-d’Oise arouses an outcry by claiming the eviction of a tenant sentenced for the June riots

2023-08-25 09:32:46
The prefect of Val-d’Oise Philippe Court attends the presentation of the New Year’s Eve measures of the national police and the departmental fire and rescue service of Val-d’Oise, at the Argenteuil police station, on December 31, 2022. ANNA KURTH / AFP

“A shocking tweet”according to the director general of the federation of HLM organizations and the director of studies of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, while the Federation of critical solidarity actors “a staging worthy of the Chinese cultural revolution ». His author ? The prefect of Val-d’Oise. He announces, on social network X (formerly Twitter), the expulsion of‘a rioter’ sentenced to twelve months in prison for having “looted the store of an optician in Deuil-la-Barre” during “urban violence last June”. “@Prefet95 has had all the occupants of the social housing where he resided evicted”specifies the message, supplemented with the hashtag #droitsetdevoirs “and photos showing the evacuation of the family’s belongings, under the surveillance of the police.

Already seen by more than 5.3 million people, on Thursday evening August 24, one day after its publication, “This tweet wrongly suggests that the eviction was decided by the prefect, and that it is linked to the conviction of the tenant following the riots”, criticizes Marianne Louis, director general of the Social Union for the habitat, which federates the organizations HLM. However, such an expulsion can only be decided by the courts, after a long procedure. And it can only be motivated by a breach of the lease. Marianne Louis emphasizes in a tweet what “No one is supposed to ignore the law, even less the State services, which should give the right explanation to our fellow citizens”.

The prefect of Val-d’Oise, Philippe Court, admitted to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the expulsion decision was “pre-existing” and taken “for another reason”. He nevertheless played a role: it is indeed up to him to grant the assistance of the police to force the tenant to leave his home. “He rushed this deal for a moral reason – condemnation during the riots. Which amounts to inflicting a double penalty on this tenant as well as a collective punishment, since his brothers and sisters living with him also find themselves without housing.says the director of studies at the Abbé Pierre Foundation, Manuel Domergue.

Philippe Court also announced to AFP that he had hired, since the beginning of the year, “twenty-nine rental eviction procedures for crimes mainly related to drug trafficking and rodeos”and now against “the rioters”, based on an agreement signed in 2019 with the social landlords of the department and the prosecution. A statement once again not entirely consistent with reality, because only a lessor can initiate such an eviction procedure and the facts of delinquency are not valid reasons: it must be demonstrated that these people create nuisances for the neighborhood, proscribed in lease contracts.

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