French govt to tackle housing after tent campaign

By Staff
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PARIS, Jan 4 (Reuters) Housing should be an enforceable right like education, the French government said, after a high-profile action by a lobby group forced the issue of homelessness to the top of the media agenda.

The plight of the homeless has become a campaign issue ahead of next year's presidential election after a group calling itself ''The Children of Don Quixote'' set up tents in Paris to draw attention to people sleeping rough.

The issue has dominated the news and forced politicians from all main parties to promise more help for those without a roof over their heads.

''We must move to higher speed,'' government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope told France 2 television, saying Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin would make concrete proposals for better housing provision later in the day.

A draft law, which would allow those who cannot find a flat to seek legal redress, should be debated in parliament before the end of February, Cope said. Details would be released later.

About 86,500 people are homeless in France, according to official figures from 2001.

Aid groups say more than 3 million people have serious housing problems -- living on the street, in shabby hotels, caravans or in flats without bathrooms or heating.

''The Children of Don Quixote'' initiated the current debate when it set up dozens of red tents along Paris's Canal Saint Martin last month, calling on Parisians to sleep out in the cold in solidarity.

The government has already promised more money and longer opening hours for shelters, but Don Quixote say that is not enough, calling on authorities to open shelters 24 hours a day throughout the year and to build more social housing.

CHIRAC STEPS IN Highlighting the intensity of the debate, President Jacques Chirac referred to the issue in his New Year's address, saying the right to housing had to become a reality. The two main candidates for next year's vote have also entered the fray.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate, has vowed that no homeless person would have to sleep outside within two years of his taking office.

The Socialists' Segolene Royal has called for a ''vast plan to fight against economic insecurity''.

Surveys show Sarkozy and Royal equally matched ahead of the two-round election in April and May next year.

Later yesterday, Villepin will receive a report from Xavier Emmanuelli, founder of the Samu Social support group for the homeless, on a law enshrining the right to housing.

''(Writing) this fundamental reform into law...will put the right to housing on one level with the right to medical care or education,'' Emmanuelli told Liberation daily, saying that implementing such a law would take years.

''It will force public authorities to organise themselves to produce accommodation that corresponds to needs,'' he said.

Pro-housing groups say homelessness is only one aspect of serious housing problems, which force tens of thousands to live in shabby flats because they cannot find long-term social housing.

France's housing problems became the subject of media attention in 2005, when fires in crowded and dilapidated Paris buildings killed almost 50 people, many of them immigrants and children.

REUTERS PDM RK0931

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