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Helplessness08/30/05 -- For the third time since the beginning of the year, a fire of tremendous violence has enveloped a Parisian apartment building and brought about the deaths of at least seven people of African origin. This repetition, within an interval of a few days, of an incident of this nature has emphasised the feeling of overwhelming, which has taken hold of everybody, and demonstrated the helplessness of the public services to prevent such catastrophes. In the evening of Monday 29th August, the fire, which had begun in a squat in the Rue du Roi Dore in the Marais district, immediately grew to alarming proportions. In the early hours of the morning the fire brigade released a provisional report: seven deaths (including one child) and three seriously injured. The week before the fire in the Boulevard Vincent-Auriol brought about the deaths of seventeen people (including fourteen children). In April, flames destroyed the Hotel Paris –Opera, killing twenty-four people (including five children). The fact that these incidents have been repeated does not mean that they are comparable in all aspects. The occupants of the Paris-Opera were foreign nationals, without residence permits*, having come from a diverse range of European and African countries. The inhabitants of the apartment block on the boulevard Vincent-Auriol, managed by a charitable association, were French of Malian origin, some of whom had been waiting for social housing for more than ten years. The victims in the squat on the Rue du Roi-Dore were foreigners who were without the appropriate papers**. But these differences in status cannot mask the evidence: each time, these were modest families, completely impoverished, essentially of African origin, who had found themselves prisoners of unhealthy and overcrowded buildings. Each time, women and children perished in ravaging fires, without the rapidity and courage of the fire services being doubted for a second. One cannot be sure that neither the first nor the most recent in the series of fires, which hit people living precariously and those who were refugees in the centre of our large cities. Three fires nevertheless had reduced hostels to cinders in Paris in 1986, killing eighteen people in total. Greeks, Turkish people, Africans and people of indochinese origin. This simple reminder is enough to encourage public services to put in place what was not known about twenty years ago, a solution to the problem of housing vulnerable populations. The city of Paris in its census of three years ago had one thousand unhealthy apartment buildings. A plan of action had been set out: buy back and renovation. It is in the process of realisation. It is better than nothing, but it does not deal with the immense size of the demand for social housing, nor does it get rid of the apparently inexorable problem of the price of rents and real estate across the board. Faced with speculation and inflation of the apartment block bubble, it has become time to assign the housing credits of the “Ministry of Borloo� towards the poorest instead of allowing the whole price to privilege the owners of the property. * papiers recueillis à titre provisoire Le Monde editorial -- Translated by Katherine Apps Go to original article: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-683748@51-681704,0.html |
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