In Paris, police step up encampment evictions ahead of the Olympics

On a Tuesday morning in late May, at least three dozen police officers surrounded an encampment in central Paris. The streets above the banks of the Seine were virtually empty and the cafes still closed when they evicted more than 100 boys and young men, many from West Africa. It was just past 7 a.m.

"It's always the same," said Tomster Soumah from Guinea, who has been moved on more times than he can count. The stoic 16-year-old gathered his belongings in a plastic bag and joined his friends in search of a new spot on the other side of the city. 

As he left, he marvelled at the irony that Paris will host an estimated 10 million spectators for the upcoming Olympic Games. "They tell everyone, 'Come!'" he said. "'France is a land of liberty, solidarity and fraternity!' But that's not the reality, not for us." 

Some 3,500 people were estimated to be homeless this year in Paris (likely an underestimate), a 16 per cent increase on last year.

Human rights groups say that in the approach to the Paris Olympics, police have stepped up evictions and deportations of people living and working on the streets of the capital and surrounding suburbs, in what some describe as social cleansing. 

"I have police officers who have told me their mission is to evict people quickly," says Paul Alauzy, Doctors of the World co-ordinator. 

"The goal is to have a postcard Paris, and normally, that's not something we would oppose. But this was a missed opportunity to find more dignified solutions, where people are not simply moved on and cut off from access to care."

Alauzy is also a spokesperson for Le revers de la médaille, or "the other side of the medal," a coalition of more than 100 human rights groups advocating for marginalized people in the approach to the Olympic Games. 

The collective found in a June report that evictions have been steadily rising, from 121 operations in 2021-22 to 137 in 2023, accelerating at the end of that year to 16 evacuations in 17 weeks. 

Although many evictions are carried out in Paris, a city spokesperson stressed that the French government plans them, and that emergency accommodations are the federal body's jurisdiction. 

Paris "is calling for the State to … shelter people in the many vacant buildings," the spokesperson said.

Many hotels once renting out rooms to the homeless under government contracts are now returning to tourism, contributing to the steep decline in available beds. 

To relieve the pressure, the Greater Paris prefecture arranges to have homeless migrants bussed to other regions, like Bordeaux and Lyon. 

"It's intolerable that they should live this way," said a prefecture spokesperson. "In the greater Paris area, there is shelter for up to 120,000 people, and we've reached a saturation point."