The census was organised after a government official said that there were only 50 homeless people in Paris, while another argued that most slept rough “by choice”.
The unprecedented census operation was carried out last Thursday night with the help of some 1,700 volunteers and 300 Paris officials, who scoured the streets in order to record the size of the city’s homeless population.
The volunteers counted the number of people sleeping in doorways with little more than a sleeping bag for cover or camped out in makeshift tents.
They also asked homeless people about their housing and health problems in a bid to collect key data Paris’ socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo hopes will help local authorises design better and more personalised policies to help those living on the street.
Deputy mayor Bruno Julliard, however, warned that the figure of 2,952 homeless people, along with the 672 people currently staying in emergency shelters, was a low estimate.
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.
He said: “People sleeping in car parks were not counted, nor were the ones sleeping in the staircases of buildings, notably social housing.”
The head of FNARS, France’s national federation of reception and social integration associations said that the figures were “worrying” and that the situation was “not worthy of France”.
Florent Gueguen told France’s Europe 1 radio said: “The figures are very worrying. Some 3,000 people are sleeping rough on the streets and some 2,000 people are staying in emergency shelters. That’s a total of 5,000 people without a roof over their heads in Paris alone.
“[Homelessness] is a huge and serious problem which the government needs to respond to. This is not worthy of France.”
The debate about the city’s ongoing homelessness problem was reignited last month after urban affairs minister Julien Denormandie said that “only around 50 men” were sleeping rough in the Paris region, drawing bitter criticism and scorn from charities.
Days later, centrist lawmaker Sylvain Maillard, a member of president Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche (La REM) party, rubbed salt into the wound by stating that some homeless people refused help and slept rough – despite the freezing weather – “by choice”.
Mr Macron promised last summer to clear homeless people and migrants off the streets of France by the end of the year, but was recently forced to admit that he had failed to make good on his pledge.