The Court of Auditors makes a critical inventory of the way in which France deploys its accommodation policy for homeless people, on an unprecedented scale: in the face of continuous growth in needs, the State has multiplied its credits by three in ten years, until reaching 3.2 billion euros in 2023, and the number of beds increased to 334,000 in a report titled “Relations between the State and managers of accommodation structures”, and published on Tuesday the 1st.Ahem In October, the court made a clear observation: “The State is not correctly fulfilling its mission”which consists of defining a strategy, then “ Manage your partners to ensure proper implementation. [de cette stratégie]and the quality of the service provided. »
Strategy, first. The Court observes that the State manages “two different parks, isolated, but affected by the same trends and whose audiences have certain links”with, on the one hand, accommodation for asylum seekers and, on the other, general accommodation, which is based on the principle of unconditional reception of people in danger and which represents two thirds of the places.
He adds that only a small part of this overall adaptation goes to the “housing first” policy, which aims to give homeless people direct access to housing. But the emergency park itself, “which is the one that grows the most during the period, is not the subject of a definition of strategic objectives according to its importance”criticizes the Court. She goes further: “This policy based on the management of temporary emergencies has until now been managed as if the flows could be reversed or dried up, while they have only consolidated and intensified. »
“A chronic budget insufficiency”
The report then presents numerous evidence of this short-term strategy, denounced for years by associations fighting against homelessness, as well as by structures, mostly associations, that implement accommodation on behalf of the State.
“A true policy to control accommodation costs can only arise, in the medium term, from a reduction in the causes of the demand for accommodation and, therefore, from the success of social prevention policies that intervene in an upward direction. However, accommodation costs continue to be marked by the recurring desire to show a limited increase in appropriations in the initial finance law, regardless of the objective assessment of the anticipated needs.the report states. Go on “a chronic under-budgeting” in view of the needs, and it has been that way for fifteen years.
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