The administrative court ordered on November 2 the eviction of the illegal camp of Empalot, on the banks of the Garonne near the Stadium. a hundred people, Albanian Roma, many families with young children, are expellable from this Thursday, November 17. Half of the residents left, the other half stayed because there are school children.
Two associations take care of these families, Doctors of the World and Utopia 56 who mobilized in front of the prefecture on Monday. In vain, they were not received.
These are “dry expulsions” because there is no suitable solution. — Antoine Bazin, Doctors of the World
In Toulouse, the emergency accommodation facilities are completely saturated. “The prefecture has limited reception at the hotel to one vulnerable family per week. It’s very limited and of course for single men it’s not even worth thinking about.“, supports the coordinator of mobile actions of Doctors of the World.
Is the situation deteriorating in the Pink City? “Yes and no. Here we are talking about the biggest slum in Toulouse, the situation is not progressing and people will be even more precarious. But in addition, it happens that the prefecture and the Town Hall make things happen, this was the case in 2021 on two sites. It can work but it takes time, money and consideration for these people.”
In 2017, the largest squat in France had been dismantled at the Arènes
In Toulouse. In April 2019, on this same site on the banks of the Garonne, already lived a hundred Albanians before their evacuation
. Again in September 2019, to deal with the phenomenon of tents in the city center where families lived, Jean-Luc Moudenc had taken a anti-bivouac order
. The mayor had denounced “organized Albanian networks“. An accusation on which Doctors of the World does not position itself.”It remains families with children who go to school. We are talking about rupture of care, rupture of schooling, growing precariousness, network or not“, slice Antoine Bazin.