A side of the Paris Olympics they don't want you to see

Over the past 18 months, authorities have cleared the streets of the French capital, busting squats full of refugees and breaking up homeless encampments in the shadow of Games venues. Lawrence Ostlere meets those picking up the pieces

Nation is a metro station in the east of Paris, away from the city's carefully curated Olympic trail. There are no giant pink signs pointing the way to the nearest venue here. On the platform, a man and his dog slump on a rotten mattress. At the top of the stairs another man is lying motionless on the street, his phone spilled from his pocket, looking half-dead.

The station serves Le Place de Nation, a giant leafy roundabout with a pedestrianised ring and a dozen boulevards spoked off in every direction. It is a bustling, diverse space, and at 6pm on a humid August evening, up one of these streets, people are beginning to gather.

There are men, women and children of all ages, including babies in prams. They hail from Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Somalia and Afghanistan. By 6.30pm there are nearly 100 refugees here, waiting.

Then a truck pulls in and parks up. In a few minutes, volunteers for Medecins du Monde have created a makeshift doctor’s surgery using the rear of the truck and a pop-up tent, complete with an on-street waiting room. Another organisation, Utopia 56, arrives with food supplies: soup and bread, boxes of pasta, yoghurt, fruit and water.

It is a nightly congregation of people with different stories to tell. One woman escaped domestic abuse in Algeria a decade ago and has been homeless in Paris ever since. “I cannot go back because my husband is in the military,” Faiza says. “Women in Algeria have no rights.” She slept in metro stations for nine years before finding Utopia 56, which has been helping her find temporary accommodation for the past few months. “The people here have humanity,” she smiles.

A Senegalese woman has full-time work but it doesn’t pay enough for her and her teenage daughter to rent in Paris. They come here together but spend most nights apart, taking whatever beds Utopia can find them.