Under world's eye, a city hides its homeless

They are the undesirables, the displaced, Les Misérables.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

But most of all they’re out of sight.

Abus ticket to somewhere else is just about all that this city’s homeless — migrants, transients, asylum seekers, the shuffling desperados — have been offered, their existence scrubbed from view in advance of the Olympic Games.

Take it or leave it. But leave. Advocates for the unhoused describe the removal of the homeless from the streets and bridge underpasses of Paris as “social cleansing.” Over the past few months and especially in recent weeks, encampments have been dismantled, tent cities raided and the most vulnerable souls made to move along, as far away as possible from the Olympic spectacle.

Officials are intent on showcasing the grandeur of France and the beauty of Paris. There’s no room in that pretty postcard scene for the destitute and the sleeping rough.

“People were living here a week ago,” Paul Alauzy was saying on Thursday, pointing to the cement structures — they look like giant Lego blocks, with a knobby surface, by design impossible to sit or lie upon — that have been affixed to the ground beneath Pont de Stains bridge that spans the Canal Saint-Denis on the outskirts of the city. “They’d already been expelled from the city centre, pushed out here. Then they were pushed away again, all the tents torn down. We had a warning but it was still shocking.

“This really represents social cleansings in a nutshell.”

Upwards of 120 people got booted from this location alone, hundreds more along a series of five canal bridges. Colourful screens were dropped from the overpasses to cover the graffiti.

“Hide the misery,” snorts Alauzy, project manager for Médecins du Monde, which is among the more than 100 NGOs and other agencies that have come together under the collective of “Le reverse de la medaille” — the flip side of the medal.