By CRAIG S. SMITH
PARIS, May 3 — The Arc de Triomphe, the towers of Notre Dame and, now, pup tents for the poor. There is new architecture springing up along the streets of this stately city, a counterpoint to the stone monuments and Beaux-Arts apartment buildings for which the French capital is known.
Since the frigid days of late December, Doctors of the World, a French organization that helps the homeless, has been distributing nylon tents to the growing number of people who sleep on the city's sidewalks and beneath its bridges.
Not everyone is pleased.
"They're ugly," said a short woman with a large red purse marching past two tents in the affluent Seventh Arrondissement, where four young Poles are living beneath the sycamores with a view of the Hôtel des Invalides.
There are thousands of people living on the streets of Paris, many of them newly arrived immigrants from European Union countries to the east, and Doctors of the World vows to continue distributing tents until the government finds housing.
For now, the city authorities tolerate the tents. But as word spreads among immigrants, the phenomenon could spread. Already, some charitable Parisians are giving the homeless tents, and some of the homeless are procuring them on their own.
That's fine with Doctors of the World, which says the more tents there are, the more pressure on the government to address the problem.
"The moment will come when they will have to do something," said Florian Borg, head of the organization's Paris chapter, peering through the fogged windows of a white van as he navigated the medieval twists and turns of the Latin Quarter.
In keeping with France's centuries-long nod to the egalitarian ideals of the Revolution, anyone can stake out a patch of city sidewalk, as long as there is no public disturbance.
The homeless have long slept along the quays beneath the bridges over the Seine. Camping in public areas without authorization is illegal, "but the law doesn't allow us to take forcible action," said Capt. Marie Lajus, a spokeswoman for the Paris police. "It is only punishable with a fine." No fines have been levied so far.
This latest twist on being down and out in Paris is yet another sign of the high unemployment and weakening welfare system that have set off unrest here in the past year. There are still relatively few homeless people in France; a 2001 survey estimated 86,500, of which 15,000 lived in the Paris region. But everybody agrees the number is growing.
Doctors of the World was formed in 1993 to give the homeless medical care and help in finding shelter during that year's unusually cold winter. More than a decade later, the organization is still at it, and sees many of the same people year after year.
On Dec. 21, the organization sent teams throughout Paris, offering a tent to anyone they found sleeping outdoors. About 300 tents, stenciled with the white cross of the group's logo, have been distributed so far; another 150 are on order.
Mr. Borg pulled the van over to the curb, where three tents sat on subway exhaust vents beside the Seine. An umbrella formed a makeshift portico at the entrance to one of the tents, the bottom half of a water bottle hung hopefully beside it to collect coins from passers-by. The team's records show that they left four tents at the site in December. Two were gone but a new one had appeared.
The flap of the new tent opened and Franck, 34, who would not give his last name, poked his head out, releasing a plume of fetid air. His right ear was swollen from a streptococcus infection, and he asked the doctor with Mr. Borg for advice.
He said he had come to Paris from Tours, in the Loire Valley, and had been living on the streets for 13 years, mostly in a triangle between the Austerlitz train station, the Botanical Gardens and the Seine.
Many of the homeless with papers manage to collect welfare payments of about $450 a month, but it is almost impossible for the homeless to get into public housing, for which even people with jobs and fixed addresses wait years, and sometimes decades.
There are not enough beds in the city's shelters to house all of the homeless, even in the winter months. And many shelters shut down when the warm weather arrives, forcing people into the streets to endure the spring storms.
The gray, blue and maroon tents are usually arranged in clusters, like barnacles on a rocky shore, allowing their occupants to take turns guarding one another's belongings. Franck's encampment includes three tents and four men. Two Poles live in the tents left by Doctors of the World and Franck shares his, left by a passer-by, with another Pole.
While the doctor examined Franck's ear, a tall Polish man dressed in denim and with a fresh haircut approached Mr. Borg and asked with hand motions if he could have a tent. After determining that the man was living under a nearby bridge, Mr. Borg promised to deliver one as soon as the new tents arrived.
Franck returned to his tent and Mr. Borg and his team climbed back into their van to escape the quickening rain when another man in a sodden red windbreaker appeared, asking for help.
The tents shelter people moving up in the world and those on their way down.
On Boulevard Montparnasse, where Polish men have gathered eight tents under a railroad bridge, a middle-aged man named André asked Mr. Borg for help finding a cheap flat and French lessons. He has a job and said his employer had promised to help him get working papers if he could move to a fixed address.
Not far away three young Poles, who gave their names as Roberto, Raphael and Annette, huddled in a tent with a pit bull named Ares. A white ceramic dish of dog food sat beside the tent.
Though they speak only rudimentary French, Roberto and Raphael said they each earned about $2,000 a month in construction. They've been in France for six months and have no intention of going back to Poland.
"We'll buy a house someday," Annettte
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Ahh... Sweet Pariee! ~PSL
Ed Alcock for The New York TimesA French charity, Doctors of the World, has supplied 300 tents to the homeless of Paris, who include a number of recent immigrants from new members of the European Union. Along Avenue de Breteuil, in the fashionable Seventh Arrondissement, Annette, a 21-year-old Pole, lives with her dog, Ares.
Humane-Rights-Agenda Blog
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http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/2006/05/paris-journal-for-migrants-and-poor.html#links
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