The launch of these “bubbles” was announced by the official in charge of the city's homeless population who on Tuesday evening said that they would help increase the amount of accommodation for people living on the Paris streets.
“We need at least 3,000 more places [for homeless people],” said Dominique Versini.
So far the size of the “bubbles” has not been revealed although Versini said that they would account for “at least half” of the 3,000 places she says are necessary. It has also not been decided where these bubbles will be located.
She also announced the creation of a public bath and shower area reserved for women, as well as two new restaurants for the city's homeless and an area for them to store their belongings.
However so far City Hall has not announced when this plan will be put into action.
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Photo: AFP
During the city's first ever Nuit de Solidarite (Night of Solidarity) in February, 1,700 volunteers and 300 Paris officials found that at least 3,000 people were sleeping rough on the streets of the French capital and authorities warned that this was likely to be a serious underestimate.
This situation is “of absolute urgency,” said Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo on Tuesday night, adding that it was necessary to come up with new ways of addressing the situation.
“Today there are 16,000 permanent places every day, and you need to go beyond that,” she continued.
In February, after several controversies over the number of people on the street, the government had argued that 13,000 emergency shelter places had been created this winter.
Visitors to Paris are often shocked by the poverty that exists in some parts of the capital, especially the omnipresent beggars on the metro and the migrants' tents perched along the Canal Saint-Martin.
According to recent figures, 11 people living on the Paris streets died between January 1st and February 12th in 2018.
And across the greater Paris region of Ile-de-France there were a total of 18 deaths during the same period, according to the list from Les Morts dans la Rue (Deaths on the street), a collective dedicated to documenting the deaths of homeless people in France.
In response to the list, Jean-Christophe Combe, director general of the Red Cross, told Le Figaro that the situation was “not acceptable and not sustainable”.
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