This morning, on France Bleu Occitanie, we chose to talk about those who sleep rough in Toulouse, those who sleep in a sleeping bag when it has been very cold for two weeks.

Hello Stéphane Blandin Fauré. You are president of the Red Cross in Toulouse. Could you tell us first how many people sleep rough in Toulouse?

Today, on the last census carried out by the town hall of Toulouse with the help of associations, 775 people sleep rough. They are mainly single people, 30% of whom are women and 4 to 5% families. In the case of families, it is mostly fairly recent homelessness since the policy of the city of Toulouse as well as that of the prefecture has increased by 60% the places in hotels and by more than 35% the places in the various emergency accommodation centres.

So you, at the Red Cross, to help them, do you patrol at night, do you help in the street or do you try to arrange for them to be accommodated for the night?

The role of patrols, whether during the day or at night, is above all togo ahead of people, to create this link and maintain it in our role. We also have the fact of alerting SIAO, which is the organization that federates, manages and coordinates all the marauding, which is in charge of finding places of accommodation and therefore of making requests through their social observations to the various state bodies.

What concrete help do you provide when you go out on the street?

The maraudes today have greatly expanded. Before, we were mainly on a link so with a coffee, a little treat, etc. And then, since COVID, we have increased our distribution. We bring a lot of food to complete that made by associations such as the Restos du Coeur. We will bring clothes, we’re going to bring hygiene products, we’re going to bring duvets, blankets, all the types of donations that citizens make today. On different companies that are partners.

The Toulouse marauder circulates every day, seven days a week?

The Toulouse marauding, today that of the Red Cross, runs four days a week, including two afternoons plus a marauding, alas, to go to places where the others no longer go. There is a mesh that is made in Toulouse, between the different associations. You should know that you also have the Catholic Relief and you have Les Restos du Coeur and many other associations marauding today.

So, in addition to the cold, there are bad weather, the Garonne overflowed a few days ago. Has this had any consequences for the homeless, especially who sleep in La Prairie des Filtres?

This had the consequence of divert those people who were on the Prairie des Filtres. But since we had a flood last year, it allowed us toto anticipate and to put in place information plans since last year there had really been damage, tents taken away, pets taken away. This year, everything necessary had been done, in particular by the local police who went to the scene to warn, inform and ask people to find them other places, even to open emergency structures.

Albanian families have returned to settle along the Garonne, Empalot district. Do you try to help them, these families there? Do you see that they are income?

Yes indeed, they have returned and today some associations specialize since it sometimes happens that it is quite complicated to get in touch, if only because of the language barrier. But yes, indeed, they have returned and indeed, some associations have returned to them to try to find solutions to their situation.

The Haute-Garonne prefecture has just opened 205 additional emergency accommodation places. Is it enough for now?

We can estimate that this is never enough because we gradually identify the needs and the accommodation centers that we must find in based on people’s profiles. We will have people with animals, we will have families. We cannot mix with single people. We are going to have single women. So, it is difficult to find accommodations that are specialized and adapted to different situations. And then, above all, on more and more people coming to the streets. And so, these places of accommodation try to adapt, to perpetuate themselves to avoid putting people back on the street even when the winter is over. And it is relatively complicated to find the number of structures and especially the number of people to manage and supervise these structures.

Do you think it’s not the solution to always create more places? Is that your speech?

No, because today, there is a need to create places. We are in a system where emergency accommodation provides access to other levels of structures, such as family houses, like the accommodation and social reintegration centers. So it’s true that it’s the first step for people to get out of a situation when they no longer have a home, when they find themselves in a precarious situation. So, there is a need for these emergency accommodations, but it is true that it is very complicated to manage them and we have to anticipate the fact that people will leave to try to return to housing.

Who are the priority people in these emergency accommodations?

The priority is rather made from a system of social evaluation that the patrols make using the 115. We will mainly focus today on what the law tells us, that is to say pregnant women over six months, from mothers single women with children up to 3 years old. But we will also have people who abuse pathologies, people the elderly homeless. In fact, we try not to have a completely strict scale of values, but to adapt to each case and to adapt especially to each situation when it is winter or when there is heavy rain.