No less than 3,085 people on the street were counted during the fifth Night of Solidarity organized in Paris and in a few surrounding cities on the night of January 20 to 21, according to “the final results” unveiled this Wednesday, June 29.

A total of 2,598 homeless people were counted in Paris and 487 others in the nine neighboring partner municipalities (Aubervilliers, Bobigny, Bondy, Courbevoie, Gagny, Romainville, Rosny-sous-Bois, Rueil-Malmaison and Saint-Denis) during of the fifth Night of Solidarity, a press release from Apur (Parisian urban planning workshop) this Wednesday.

A little down from 2021

This represents a drop of 231 people compared to the March 2021 edition (- 8%), underlines Apur, which recalls that “between 2020 and 2021, the number of people met had already decreased by – 21% ” .

Impossible to compare the figures recorded in the partner municipalities, since it was the first time that they participated in the Night of Solidarity.

For the institution, this decrease has occurred for two years is explained “in particular by the sharp increase in the number of places of accommodation and shelter compared to previous years”.

Many homeless people in the center of Paris

According to the results of Apur, it is in the Paris Center arrondissement (345 people met), in the 12th (282 people met), in the 19th (251 people met) then in the 18th (214 people met) that homeless people are the most numerous.

Added to this is the particular case of Bobigny (93), where volunteers found private land on which 240 homeless people had settled in families, in addition to the 65 named in the rest of the town, bringing to 305 the number of people in street situations in this city of Seine-Saint-Denis.

Unsurprisingly, it is in the wealthiest Parisian neighborhoods that there are the fewest homeless people. Only 46 people on the street have been replaced in the 7th, 51 in the 6th and 72 in the 16th. In the inner suburbs, some municipalities have been designated few homeless people, such as Romainville where there was only one homeless person.

Mostly single men

Regarding their profiles, they are “substantially identical” to those observed in previous editions. The people met in Paris on the night of January 20 to 21 were mostly alone (80%), while 14% occurred in groups of at least five people and 6% were met as a couple or family.

In addition, 90% of the people met that evening were men, marking “a drop in the number of women on the rush”. Indeed, they represent 10% of the people counted, while their proportion fluctuated between 12% in 2018 and 13% in 2021, welcomes Apur.

A decrease which can, according to the institution, “be linked to the increase in the number of accommodation places and targeted devices for this particularly vulnerable public”.

Despite everything, “good news” which reinforces the Parisian municipality to continue to act in favor of the homeless in general. Concrete actions such as accompanying them in their procedures, offering them access to the internet or even solutions for storing their belongings.

“The meeting of Parisian solidarity is part of our desire to recreate the link with all those who no longer find their place in our society”, thus manifested Léa Filoche this Wednesday, who intends to continue to “work at properly identify the needs to provide appropriate and flexible responses to the economic and social challenges of exclusion”.

The metropolis of Greater Paris is renewing the approach

Finally, a great novelty this year, this 5th edition of the Nuit de la Solidarité in Paris had for the first time been extended to the metropolitan scale.

A first experiment which was not carried out on all of these 9 municipalities, but only on selected districts, but which notably made it possible, according to the municipality, “to test the methodological aspects of its deployment, with a view to a enlargement of the number of municipalities concerned in the future on a metropolitan scale”.

“Following the smooth running of the operation and in view of the interest of the results that emerge, the Métropole du Grand Paris has chosen to renew the process”, we learned on Wednesday. The second metropolitan edition, articulated with the Parisian operation, will thus make it possible “to broaden the analysis to more municipalities, and to better understand the territorial continuities in the paths and needs of homeless people in Greater Paris”.