The President and the Poor
140,000 to 200,000. The exact number of homeless people in France is somewhere in between those two, a foggy figure no polling institute could really, perfectly hit.
Extreme poverty has been fought by French associations since the 1950s. In the 1980s, it eventually became a major topic on the political agenda, only to be temporary put under the spotlights. Now, as the political landscape is being shuffled anew following Emmanuel Macron’s election to the presidential function, poverty as a political matter lags behind.
Macron’s programme comprises five major points to tackle poverty :
- a “decent income for all,” the universal access to social rights such as the right to domiciliation,
- the access to “essential goods and services,”
- the access to the job market and formations,
- the association of poor people to the crafting of all kind of poverty-related public policies.
These objectives will most probably be tackled by the newly appointed Solidarities and Health Minsiter Agnès Buzyn. A doctor and a scholar, Buzyn is specialized in hematology ; she had been the head of the High Authority of Health under former President François Hollande.
Even though most of these measures have gone undernoticed during the campaign, some French media have tried to take them to the targeted population and establish a dialogue. In Le Plus (a contributive platform created by French media L’Obs), a homeless man named Christian Page voices his concerns about the current situation.
Even though I am not the only homeless person to have the right to vote, to be honest, in my community, a lot of people do not speak out. Some have lost their official papers. For instance, my bag was stolen twice last year. Each time you have to re-issue them and deal with administrative issues. But one can’t lie : most homeless people don’t care about politics. There’s a reason : they think that whomever will be their future candidate, it won’t change a thing to their situation.
On the other hand, in Reims, a town of 183,000 Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron visited in mid-March, there is still hope. Zahia Nouri is the head of Maraude citoyenne rémoise, an association that has been helping the homeless since October 2013, when her homeless brother passed away.
There is around 230 homeless people in the city. Nouri and her association feed 80 to 110 of them twice a week with the help of volunteers. She is the only one that is working full-time for La Maraude. “We have families, refugees, but also young people below 25 years old who should not be here,” she said.
Benoît Migneaux, an real estate entrepreneur, is one of the main supporters of the association. He encourages the companies he works with to give away goods and services to Nouri’s organization. “I have not asked for public subventions and I will not,” explained Nouri. She said she did not want to comply to rules or to be held accountable by exterior institutions.
Nouri is rather careful when it comes to the new government. “One day I left the premises and I stumbled upon (Macron),” she told. “I said ‘Hello Mr. Macron, what are you going to do for the homeless’, and he started to give me his mainstream stuff, ‘home families’ and all of this. We wanted to go talk to him with two homeless persons but then we couldn’t get anywhere near him.”
More interestingly, she said that suddenly a woman called her out and started chatting with her for approximately ten minutes. Then she learned she was talking to Brigitte Macron. “She asked for my card. She said I had an interesting profile and that I wasn’t stonewalling. She told me she would get in touch.”
And had she, now that her husband was elected into office ? Not yet, answered Nouri. “When we listen to Macron speaking, he says he cares about people who get involved at the local level. So, we’ll see,” she concluded.
Nouri has hope. Now two homeless people work at the premises for La Maraude ; three others are taking care of a communal garden near Reims. One even got out of the street and found a long-term job. « So there’s still hope, » she repeated, with a wholehearted laugh.
Agora is a world politics column by Marion Lefèvre published every Thursday in The Pitchwriter. Follow us to receive our articles in your inbox every day.
