“I didn’t think you could be on the street being French, loose, without anger, Dominique (this is a borrowed first name). And I thought having children would make it easier to get emergency accommodation…” The young woman separated from her husband a few years after they left France, and returned there alone, with two of their children. A time hosted by an acquaintance in Paris, she then experienced the galleys of 115, the call number for emergency accommodation.
She benefited, sometimes, from three nights in a hotel. Most often she spent the night in tent camps, “without really sleeping”. The young woman obtained a room in a shelter, shared with another mother and her child. But when she left to pick up her third child, who was « a danger », the center refused to accommodate the extended family. She knew the street, again, before being welcomed in a T3 by the Rosalie Rendu accommodation center of the Apprentis d’Auteuil Foundation, near Melun. ” It’s a new start “, she smiles. She is preparing for the baccalaureate and then wishes to train “in the food industry, cosmetics or perhaps interior decoration”.
In its annual report, published on Wednesday 1is February, the Abbé Pierre Foundation set out for the first time to describe in detail “the kind of poor housing”. Women appear to be a little more affected than men by the housing crisis, “because they have fewer resources, and they more often live alone, especially when they are old, or alone with children”explains the Foundation’s director of studies, Manuel Domergue.
While 20% of the population suffers from poor housing conditions, the rate reaches 40% for a single woman with one child, and 59% if, like Dominique, she has three or more children. The young woman is not the only one to have experienced emergency accommodation difficulties. “Ten or twenty years ago, mothers on the street with children were quickly taken care of. It’s much more complicated today, for lack of places.”notes Manuel Domergue.
A widening wealth gap
What about access to sustainable housing? Based on the rare studies available, the report concludes that single mothers seem to be discriminated against in accessing rental accommodation in the private sector. In social housing, single-parent families, made up of 83% single women with children, “are slightly overrepresented in allocations (29%) compared to their share in demand (25%)”indicates the report, but this is less the case in tense areas, where these families nevertheless have less means to find private accommodation.
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