France: the freeze on evictions is over

Determined to continue the work of her predecessor helping to house the poor, she was at it again this year, when the winter freeze on evictions ended on Saturday. "We want to mark the occasion, as we have done for the last four years. Even if the decrees are regularly challenged and repealed, it doesn't matter," says Catherine Peyge. "In this town we are used to saying that, for the things that we consider important, we are not outside the law, but ahead of the law. It is essential for this to remain an anti-eviction zone, because the housing situation has become critical."

As a result, last year Bobigny had only "around ten evictions". "In general we try to physically stand in the way of the evictions," says the mayor. "But sometimes the residents themselves don't tell us they are in difficulty, and so we can't intervene in time.. And sometimes the police presence is so big there is nothing we can do..."

Other municipalities like Bobigny, which are run by communist mayors, have passed similar decrees.. In Vénissieux, André Gerin battles relentlessly against the system.. Three decrees he passed prohibiting homes from being seized, water, gas and electricity from being cut off, and tenants from being evicted, were suspended on 14th February; but the next day he reissued them. That earned him a summons to appear before the administrative tribunal in Lyon. The mayor of Vénissieux, however, had a few arguments up his sleeve. He justified his actions on the grounds of the first annual report of the follow-up committee on the application of the statutory right to housing, which appeared on 1st October 2007, and which emphasised the need to prevent evictions. "There are around 100,000 eviction notices every year," reads the text. "According to the law on the Statutory Right to Housing (Droit au Logement Opposable - DALO), honest families who are threatened with eviction must be rehoused as a priority. Given the number of families concerned, and the human trauma caused by eviction, it should be avoided at all costs."

That was not the case for 10,719 families last year, and the forces of law and order effectively intervened to allow the evictions to go ahead. A figure which has "doubled since 1998", according to the Fondation Abbé-Pierre, "as have the number of permits granted by préfets for the police to intervene" (25,144 in 2006 - editor's note ). Similarly, while these permits were only delivered in 40% of cases in 1998, that rate has risen to 65% today, something the Foundation regards as "a drift towards state repression." Consequently, the organisation is renewing its demand for "the suspension of tenant evictions in 2008, given the worsening situation." It's a demand that was taken up on the streets of Strasbourg, Amiens, Lille and Paris, on Saturday 15th March. Around thirty organisations, including DAL (Right to Housing) and Jeudi Noir (Black Thursday), called on people to protest, and from Place de la Republique to L ' île de la Cité, several thousand people responded. Their battle cry: " Un toit, c ’ est un droit, pas d ’ expulsion .“ (A home is our right, no to evictions.)

Alexandre Fache