The reception of Ukrainian refugees immediately tensed the municipal council of Caen
By Christophe Jaquet
Published on
The city council of Caen (Calvados) began this Monday, March 28, 2022 with a pass of arms around theUkraine and the reception of refugees. She set the tone for a bitter session, where the mayor of Caen Joël Bruneau kept putting the elected representatives of the opposition in their place.
For their return to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, in the guard room, after two years of health crisis, the latter visibly annoyed the mayor of Caen Joël Bruneau, on the sidelines of the vote for a subsidy for the association Firefighters humanitarian missions in Calvados, not on the agenda.
A €10,000 grant for firefighters
Starting from Ifs, it “has already conveyed 11 trailer trucks to Moldova” according to the municipality. The City of Caen wants to “support this initiative”, and “all those that will be taken by specialized associations (Red Cross, Secours Catholique et Populaire, etc.) to help Ukrainians, via aid of €10,000. A grant which makes it possible “to finance the travel of the personnel of the association of humanitarian firefighters” [sic] “, up to 20 round trips, estimates the town hall.
The elected representatives of the minority did not reject it. But several wanted to challenge the mayor of Caen to respond to the challenges posed by the conflict.
As Prime Minister, Rudy L’Orphelin, leader of the Caen environmentalist and citizen group. While denouncing an “aggression by Russia”, which is “to address an attack on democracy, an attack on peace and our collective security”, he wanted to “salute the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people”.
As expected, it is an unfailing solidarity that must be expressed.
Vacant housing for refugees?
According to Rudy L’Orphelin, “it is the towns and cities that are in the front line to organize the reception of exiles”. Hence his direct question to Joël Bruneau: “We ask what work has been undertaken with social landlords. If the inventory of available municipal housing has been carried out? »
After having “this unworthy war in Ukraine” and “the unthinkable at the gates of Europe”, Aurélien Guidi, various left-wing municipal councilor, suggested for his part to use “the buildings awaiting real estate projects”.
Rudy L’Orphelin also recalls the proposal of his colleague from the opposition, Xavier Le Coutour, of the Citizens group in Caen, to propose to the commodat. An old device, which frames, before a notary, the free loan of a vacant home. At the end of November, the former deputy mayor, from the PS, formed the Commodat-14 collective to revive it. At the time, he produced it, around 6,000 homes will be unoccupied in Caen.
This Monday, Xavier Le Coutour returned to the charge. Many times. He first requested the provision of “vacant housing in the City of Caen”, “to foreigners wherever they come from”, “to associations which have requested it for a long time”.
Joël Bruneau’s answer was quite dry: “We have very few empty apartments. We don’t have dozens of them available. ” Why ? According to the mayor of Caen, some vacant homes “have been resold, for the sake of good management”. Others were “handed over to associations, neighborhood houses”. For him, “on a city scale, there is no need to resort to commodat”. But “as usual, the City of Caen will do its duty”.
A little later in the session, on the sidelines of a deliberation on the decommissioning of school premises and plots, Xavier Le Coutour replies: “Mr. Mayor, I think you are wrong. The City of Caen owns housing, a good part of which is unoccupied. The thing chose to exist. This deserves serious evaluation. Can we, yes or no, put them back in the circuit? He asks for “an exhaustive census”. Joël Bruneau stuck to his position, less vehemently: “It’s quite marginal all the same, and not everyone is idle. »
“A little humility”
After the four interventions of elected representatives of the opposition, the mayor preferred to temper their impulses: “Thank you for the passage of your precious strategic analyzes. Let’s have a little humility, we are only on the Caen municipal council. What the Ukrainians need to defend themselves is first of all weapons more than good words. And yes, we are generally all for peace and against war. It is not the City of Caen or the urban community that will solve the problem on their own. Things are businesses. »
A little earlier, Rudy L’Orphelin said: “Beyond the dignified reception of these populations that we must organize, our responsibility is also to take all measures to avoid contributing to the continuation of the conflict. He outlined a string of measures to reduce the City’s energy waste and consumption. According to him, “this conflict reveals our extreme dependence on fossil fuels, and in particular on Russian fossil fuels. Getting out of it is therefore an imperative for peace and security in addition to being a challenge for climate protection”.
And Aurélien Guidi has also anticipated it: according to him, the question of “the reconstruction of Ukraine” will soon arise, and “the City of Caen will have to play its part in it”.
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