Associations criticize the “social cleansing” carried out for the 2024 Olympic Games

©Loïc Venance/AFP

To ensure that Paris appears in its best light during the Olympic Games, nearly 20,000 people have been evicted from their homes since April 2023, according to a scathing report published by the Observatory of Evictions from Informal Living Spaces. Olympic fever has dismantled several hundred camps and squats, exposing the contradictions of an event celebrated for its values ​​of inclusiveness.

The important thing is to participate, but not everyone is so lucky. Between April 2023 and September 2024, 260 sites were evacuated, hitting the most vulnerable hardest. “We will have had an exceptionally exclusionary year for the most vulnerable people in the Île-de-France region,” says Paul Alauzy, spokesperson for the collective Le Revers de la monnaie, which brings together more than 100 associations. This “social cleansing” aims to mask the precariousness of large cities and only show the bright sides. AFP reports that the number of minors expelled has tripled in one year, going from 1,527 in 2021-2022 to 4,550 in 2023-2024.

For the associations, the organization of the Games becomes the pretext for a brutal policy of eradicating visible poverty. “Why not limit the event to a fixed site and broadcast it online ?” suggests the collective, pointing out the collateral damage in terms of gentrification and ecological footprint. This observation is not isolated: similar evictions were observed before the London and Tokyo Olympics, raising the question of the social impact of these major global events. Especially since, in hindsight, the price of real estate in East London has exploded, creating a gulf between those who did not benefit from the event and those who suffered from it.

Finally, it is a safe bet that the 2024 Olympics will leave a destructive mark on the capital, which is already badly damaged. There is always a downside to the coin, and it will probably taste like methodical social exclusion.

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