“Threat” to the homeless: Matilda Pano sues for “inaction” of the Bourne government

The head of the parliamentary group La France insoumise, Mathilde Paneau, who plans to spend the night in a tent in a camp for homeless families set up by the DAL in Paris, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday for “endangering the lives of others” by the former government.

This appeal to the Attorney General of the Court of Cassation is directed against former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, as well as her two ministers in charge of housing, Olivier Klein and Patrice Vergriet (since July 2023). The MP recalls that “the law imposes on the government a duty of care and therefore to manage the special risks facing homeless people,” especially during periods of extreme cold.

“Whilst the government has introduced regulatory measures to combat this risk, effective means of providing housing as well as reception have not been implemented in sufficient time,” she explains, citing “deliberate failure to act” allowing “the criminalization of ministers responsible for housing , and the Prime Minister.”

Matilda Pano asks the prosecutor of the Court of Cassation to hand over a “commission for the requests of the Court of the Republic”, competent to prosecute ministers for crimes committed within the scope of their functions.

‘Unprecedented number’ of children on the street

On RMC-BFMTV, the MP also announced on Tuesday that she plans to spend the night in a tent with thirty homeless people erected since Christmas by the Right to Right Association (DAL) on Solferino Street, near the National Assembly. in the 7th arrondissement.

“Three homeless people died of cold” in “four days”, 70 years after Abbe Pierre’s famous address in the freezing winter of 1954, she explained, recalling that France, the “seventh economic power in the world”, experienced an “unprecedented number” of children sleeping on outside in the midst of a cold snap.

The camp, from which she also planned with other LFI parliamentarians to respond to the press conference of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, scheduled for 20:15, “is in front of a building where 80% of the housing is so empty.” sustainable,” she lamented, calling for the requisition of empty housing.

“330,000 people in this country are homeless, twice as many as ten years ago and three times as many as 20 years ago,” she noted, criticizing the “declining APL” (individual housing assistance) or the “criminalization of homelessness through the Kasbarian-Berge law”, known as the “anti-squat law”, which triples the sanctions applied to squatters in particular.

For her, requisitioning empty buildings, especially institutional ones, is a “common sense” measure.