Tours: MP Charles Fournier accommodates homeless families in his office

2023-11-10 00:03:58

A “cry of warning” aimed at enforcing the right to housing. Green MP Charles Fournier transformed his parliamentary office in Tours into an emergency accommodation center on Thursday evening “in order to shelter homeless families and alert the authorities to the lack of resources to enforce the right to housing” .

In total, three families, five adults and five children, will sleep for five nights in a meeting room, indicated the deputy for the first constituency of Indre-et-Loire. Citing Unicef ​​figures from October, the elected official mentioned 2,800 children sleeping on the street, including 42 in Tours. “It’s a cry of warning. The action aims to challenge. This situation is not tolerable,” he insisted, as he prepared to sleep in his office, on a mattress placed on the floor.

[PRESSE] In the absence of a satisfactory response to the saturation of emergency accommodation in Tours, my office will welcome three homeless families from this evening supported by the No Children on the Street collective. ➡️ pic.twitter.com/0EBgOr3aDr

— Charles Fournier – Member of Parliament for Tours (@cfourniereelv) November 9, 2023

“We cannot be told that it costs too much, they are children. The State must mobilize,” he said. Upstairs, the three families are seated in a large meeting room. They are separated by makeshift curtains, stretched between each wall, to obtain a little privacy. Present in the premises, Vanessa Rigolet, member of the “No children on the street” collective of Tours, made up of parents of students and teachers, hopes that this “political act” carries “a strong message”.

Sheltered with his wife and two children, Blerin Cela is reassured to have found accommodation for a few days. “We sleep outside. When the weather is too bad, we pay for a Formula 1 car, but we can’t do it every evening. The children are tired, they are stressed and they cannot concentrate at school,” explained the Albanian father.

Coming to support the initiative, the environmentalist mayor of Tours Emmanuel Denis regretted having to “play the fire brigade”, by providing a school or gymnasium when the situation became too tense. “The 115 explodes. (…) The needs are growing. We sometimes find solutions, but it is not within the competence of the municipalities. So we don’t have the budget, we’re doing this out of humanity,” he reacted.

In Lyon, the environmentalist deputy for Rhône Marie-Charlotte Garin had planned to spend the night in a school, alongside sheltered families.