Nearly 250 homeless men and women, most often migrants, tried to set up their tents at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris on Thursday, October 28 in the early afternoon. An operation founded by the association Utopia 56, which intends to assert their right to be accommodated with dignity.

“While 250 people, including dozens of street children, peacefully demonstrate their right to decent accommodation, in front of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, the police evacuate and push back the journalists, without any shelter being proposed ”, thus communicated the association Utopia 56, at 2 pm, this Thursday.

On the images shot on the spot, the gendarmes were indeed intervening and had no chance for the homeless to drop their tents there. “These families need accommodation, not to be dispersed in the street,” Utopia 56 said at 2:30 pm, indicating that the police “threatened to use force” to dislodge them.

Occupation of the Place de l’Hotel de Ville in Paris: families in the street and volunteers are defrauded by the police. The police threaten to use force. These families need accommodation, not to be scattered on the streets, yet.

– Utopia 56 (@ Utopia_56) 28 October 2021

While 250 people, including dozens of street children, peacefully demonstrate their right to decent accommodation, in front of the Town Hall of #Paris, the police evacuate and push back the journalists, without any shelter being offered. pic.twitter.com/XZCIEMp5av

– Utopia 56 (@ Utopia_56) 28 October 2021

This is not the first time that homeless families, often migrants who arrived in France several months ago, have come forward in this way for their right to be accommodated. Last June, nearly 300 homeless migrants had succeeded in settling there and had spent the night under the windows of the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, before being taken care of by the City of Paris which them had hosted in its premises.

Ten punch operations

For several months, Utopia 56 – known for coming to the aid of migrants in Calais and Paris – has been carrying out punching operations in the capital, in order to make visible the fate of “these families left on the streets”. For this, with other associations – such as Solidarité Migrants Wilson or the DAL – it set up the “Collectif Réquisitions”, which has already taken over the Place de la République (11th arrondissement), the Place des Vosges, in the Marais (Paris Center), or even more recently the André Citroën park (15th).

Each time, the same mode of action: families suddenly arrive to pitch their tents and thus form a large group of people that it becomes difficult to dislodge without the use of force. On the spot, the associations then demanded from the State to open new places of accommodation.