Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, France’s minister of sports, has stated that Paris 2024 should not be used as a “scapegoat” for the nation’s issues following the Olympics’ controversial plans to transfer the homeless.
To make room for visitors to Paris 2024, tens of thousands of residents of the Île-de-France region will be urged to relocate to “temporary regional facilities” spread around France.
The owners of over 5,000 hotel rooms in the Paris region would want to use them for Olympic and Paralympic visitors instead of being used as emergency housing.
In September and October, France will also play host to this year’s Rugby World Cup, and it has been predicted that people would have better outcomes that are appropriate for their circumstances.
However, the concept has drawn criticism from others who contend that homeless people are simply unwanted before Paris 2024 gets underway.
The initiative, which will primarily affect migrants, is not connected to the Olympics, according to Oudéa-Castéra.
“We shouldn’t make the Olympics the scapegoat of all our frustrations,” she said to France 2.
“It’s important not to distort the facts and blame the Olympic Games for all our social problems.
“I don’t want us to mix everything up.
“We do have major challenges over emergency shelter, but it’s not the Olympics’ fault.
“Today we have around 200,000 emergency places, a record since 2017, and we know there’s a very strong concentration in Île-de-France.
“We have to deal with this and offer a better service.
“We cannot blame the Olympics for all the problems of society.”
According to government estimates, the number of hotel rooms available to house the homeless “will fall by 3,000 to 4,000 places” as a result of the big athletic events.
Hadrien Clouet of the left-leaning France Unbowed party, however, charged that authorities were employing “the method of all authoritarian regimes and moving the homeless by force to hide them from sight of those participating in the 2024 Olympics.”
The removal of homeless individuals from the streets and placement in better environments could, in theory, be beneficial, according to Pascal Brice, president of the charity Federation for Solidarity Workers.
He cautioned against “putting people on buses” and then forgetting about them, though.
According to reports, homeless individuals relocated ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing (2008) and Rio (2016).
individuals in China were supposedly sent back to their home provinces, and homeless individuals in Brazil were allegedly ejected from tourist zones in the middle of the night, according to campaigners there.
