Migrants appeal for immediate shelter outside Paris City Hall

The humanitarian group Utopia 56 staged a protest Tuesday night outside Paris City Hall with about 200 migrants, including families, to demand emergency shelter and denounce public policies they describe as “increasingly aggressive” toward homeless people.

Among them was Rose, a migrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo who has been in France for three years. “We were raped and tortured back home. We came here to escape, but now we are abandoned,” she said. “We sleep in metro stations, on the streets, in churches. We haven’t eaten, and some of us are sick.”

Utopia 56 says 350,000 people are currently homeless in France, up from 190,000 in 2017. The group points to the removal of 6,500 emergency shelter beds in the 2025 budget and notes that 25,000 evictions took place last year. It claims that France’s emergency hotline, 115, answers only 12% of calls in Paris, with no guarantee of housing even when calls are answered.

Nathan Lepreux, Utopia 56 coordinator, said the gathering included 210 people 90 children, about 30 of them under age three and around 40 single women. “These are the most vulnerable on the streets: single women, babies, pregnant women… all of them left outside by the state,” he said.

The volunteer-run group, which receives no public funding, also warns that summer is just as deadly as winter for people living on the streets. Thirty percent of homeless deaths occur during the summer months, the group says.

The families set up camp to spend the night in front of Paris City Hall, highlighting what they call the urgent need for safe housing.