Homeless stand in front of their tents in Lyon
©AFP - Jeff Pachoud
©AFP - Jeff Pachoud
Posted on 01/04/2007 12:49:03 PM PST by Stoat
PARIS (AFP) - The French government announced plans to create a "legal right" to housing in response to a snowballing campaign that has seen a tent city for the homeless spring up in the heart of Paris.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told a press conference a bill would be presented to the cabinet on January 17 and hopefully adopted before parliament breaks up ahead of April's presidential election.
The law, if passed, would make France the second European country to guarantee the right to housing, after Scotland which adopted similar measures with its 2003 Homeless Act.
President Jacques Chirac used his New Year's address to promise swift government action on a "right to housing" -- a key demand of protestors who have mounted a headline-grabbing campaign in support of France's estimated 100,000 homeless.
Villepin said the government wanted the right to become legally enforceable by 2008 for "people in the most difficult situations: the homeless, but also the working poor and single women with children."
"That is the time necessary to ensure that all the people concerned can be provided with decent lodgings, whether in a transitional shelter or an individual home," he said.
By 2012, the government wants the right to housing to be legally enforceable for all, with a guarantee provided by the state, or in some cases regional or local authorities.
From that point onwards, "every person or family housed in unworthy or unsanitary conditions" will able to take legal action to have their rights enforced, he said.
Villepin said the law would "make France one of the most advanced countries in terms of social rights". Housing would become the third legally enforceable right in France, along with access to education and healthcare.
Four months ahead of presidential elections, with the homeless issue thrust centre-stage, the housing measure was seen as a bid by the centre-right to underscore its commitment to social justice.
The protest wave started last month when a small group of campaigners -- called Les Enfants de Don Quichotte ("The Children of Don Quixote") -- pitched a 200-strong tent camp along a trendy Paris canal, housing homeless people as well as well-heeled citizens prepared to sleep rough for a few days out of solidarity.
Makeshift camps have since sprung up all over France, including in the Mediterranean port of Marseille, the historic town of Orleans, and the southern cities of Lyon and Toulouse.
On Tuesday a group of eight struggling families, backed by campaigners, moved into a vacant office block near the Paris stock exchange, a giant squat they have dubbed a "ministry" for the homeless and ill-housed.
Politicians of all stripes -- including presidential frontrunners Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and Segolene Royal on the left -- had responded on cue, lining up with pledges to tackle the plight of the homeless.
According to the charity Emmaus, one million people in France do not have a home of their own: 100,000 sleep rough, while the rest live in campsites, hotels or shelters. Another two million people have housing "problems".
The "right to housing" measures come in addition to a 70-million-euro (90-million-dollar) emergency plan for the homeless announced last month.
But a spokesman for Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential frontrunner, warned the government against making "great announcements", saying what was needed was a massive commitment to build more public housing.
France is just trying to keep up with us.
I have a legal right to screw up, lose everything, become and drunk or drug addict living on the street, and then, to demand housing. Hmmmm ......
I won't ask what part of town you were in ... LOL!
As I read the article, this rises beyond public housing, in that the state is required to provide it ad infinitem rather than as available.
Au revoir, France. Been nice knowing ya.
Americans enjoy space travel, we feed and protect the rest of the world, and in our spare time we like to ponder ways to become even more productive. The French enjoy participating in national strikes and cataclysmic street riots.
I suppose this is the 'enlightened' French perspective that the Left is continually lecturing us about.
Sounds to me more like France wants to subsidize the privilege of housing.
In and around the Champs Elysées as well as some outlying neighborhoods. I didn't stay long because the place reminded me of a giant, 17th century sewer more than a city.
If you walk down that street on a Saturday night, you will think you are in Tunisia or Syria.
France has homeless people?
Must be a mistake. I thought France was a socialist utopia that the United States must emulate.
The Left would be delighted if we were to be weak, effeminate and useless like France, because then they could force us into Socialism and from there, Sharia.
The Soviet template is their favorite, and they continually attempt to reprise it.
Agreed. The ear-splitting noise of the feral punks with mopeds -sans-mufflers is another of the countless reasons to instantly drop to your knees and kiss the ground when you return to America.
Yeah, that'll draw just the right kind of immigrants now, won't it? Why don't you just establish a mandatory "adopt a bum" program that applies to all native French households?
It seems that's precisely what this new legislation will accomplish, but instead of hosting the bums in your own home, your tax money will build them a home of their own.
Does anyone know what has happened to homelessness in Scotland since the wand was waved to create this "right"?
I presume that means is that if I move to France, they'll send over someone in a maid's outfit to clean my flat so I don't have to, right?
That would be the next 'logical' step. Forcing an unemployed Islamofascist to clean his own house would be terribly demeaning and disrespectful, after all.
Does anyone know what has happened to homelessness in Scotland since the wand was waved to create this "right"?
A quick and superficial web search didn't produce an immediate and direct answer to your question, but you might find this article from The Scotsman amusing, and most of the reader comments to it even more so. It seems that many are breathtakingly naive to basic principles of economics and have joyously wrapped their arms around the promise of a Socialist Utopia. Don't look toward any massive improvement in Scotland's economy anytime soon.
Scotsman.com News - Scotland - Cost fears as Eastern European immigrants get homes on arrival
Just what I was thinking. All they need is the right to food to go with the housing and they can stop all that messy and tiring protesting for guaranteed jobs, shorter work weeks, longer vacations and all of that. Then they can spend their time fighting for the inalienable right to cigarettes and wine.
no legal right to air conditioning ,though? expect lots of dead old folks in their free crappy apartments.
I'm guessing that air conditioning would be part of the minimum construction standards insisted upon by the French government.
If the bums who occupy these free homes emulate the norms of French culture, there will be lots of 'dead old folks' as you say anyhow. You may recall the scores of dead grandmas who turned up after their offspring returned home from vacations last summer as well as the year before. It's seems that the prevailing fashion is to go off and enjoy yourself with the expectation that the State will look after your parents in their tiny, sweltering apartments.
throw out all the useless invaders and there will be plenty of room for all the useless frogs!!! Tant piss...
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