A pair of jeans, a shirt and two blankets were drying in the sun, hanging from the branches of a tree on a walkway that runs along a bank of the Seine.
The clothes belonged to a group of homeless migrants living in a makeshift encampment on the walkway under a bridge that crossed the river running through central Paris. In some places more than a dozen tents were together in a row; elsewhere were smaller clusters of three or four.
The homeless migrants and asylum seekers living here kept their belongings in shopping bags beside their tents. Several stretched blankets over the top of their tent for when it got cold at night. Bottles of water, shoes and rubbish were dotted around the camps.
Fredson Alvaz (37) had been sleeping rough in a tent here for the last three months. When I stopped to talk to him, he was carrying three plastic bottles of urine from a small camp of tents to a nearby bin. “This place is not good for me,” he said.
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He said he washed his clothes in the river. During the day he walked around the French capital looking for somewhere to charge his mobile phone, he said. In the evenings sometimes he would drink wine and chat with other homeless men living along the Seine.
Originally from Cape Verde, an island in the Atlantic off west Africa, he was based in Portugal for many years. He has two children who live with their mother in Paris. That is why he moved here, but their relationship broke down. He ended up sleeping in a tent.
“I’m here January, February, March. It’s difficult. We try to live like the same in a house,” he told me. “It’s the reality, I try to do my best ... I don’t want to stay here too long. That’s why I need a job, because I don’t have money.” Alvaz hoped to be able to find work in a garage, as back in Portugal he worked in an aluminium plant. If things did not improve soon, he said, he was thinking about moving back to Portugal.
It was a sunny morning in Paris last Thursday when I visited some of the temporary homeless camps set up along the river banks. Parisians out for a run jogged by the rows of tents. Tourists and a few dog-walkers ambled past.
A lot of the homeless migrants were teenagers. Many of them had until recently been occupying a Paris theatre in protest over being left in limbo by the French immigration system.
What started as a demonstration at the Gâité Lyrique turned into a three-month occupation of the cultural centre. The large group of young migrants said they were under age, but initial assessments upon their arrival in France ruled they were likely to be at least 18 and not entitled to housing, education and other state supports. Before taking over the Gâité Lyrique, they had been sleeping rough while waiting to appeal the rulings about their likely age.
The occupation of the theatre came to an end on March 18th when police moved in and cleared more than 400 people from the building. In a statement, the Gâité Lyrique deplored the plight of young homeless migrants who had been sleeping inside the theatre but were now back on the streets.
Many returned to walkways along the banks of the Seine, a common spot for rough sleepers. The authorities had removed camps of tents during the Olympic Games last summer, pushing homeless people out of sight as the world’s gaze fell on Paris.
The eviction of those occupying the Gaité Lyrique led to homeless encampments springing up near the river again. The Paris authorities were determined to break them up.
Laurent Nunez, the head of the Paris police force, directed those staying in tents on the banks of the Seine to move elsewhere.
The order, dated March 26th and seen by The Irish Times, said nearly 140 tents had been “illegally installed” along the river, posing a public health risk due to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitary facilities and toilets.
The encampments were a “permanent disturbance to public order” and police would forcibly clear tents if people had not left, it said.
Utopia 56, an organisation that works with homeless asylum seekers in Paris, said police began clearing tents and those inside from the Seine banks on Tuesday morning.
As I walked past one of the larger homeless camps last week, three teenage boys had packed their belongings into schoolbags and were setting off.
I wonder where they are now.
