Homeless people on the streets in Paris on the night of 30th-31st January 2020

Analysis of data resulting from a count made on the 3rd Night of Solidarity

A team of volunteers on the Night of Solidarity 2019 © Guillaume Bontemps - Ville de Paris

The Night of Solidarity is an anonymous and objective counting of people who live on the street, conducted by the City of Paris each year since 2018, with numerous institutional, associative and voluntary partners. The operation was inspired by the method developed in New York and already used in other cities around the world. 

The count on the 3rd Night of Solidarity established that 3,601 people were living on the streets on the night of 30th to 31st January 2020 in Paris, while 24,900 people were, at the same time, being lodged in the context of the activated Winter Plan.  

Comparing the results with those of the two previous years reveals that the number of people living on the streets remains extremely consistent, although their whereabouts within the Parisian territory and its different districts have slightly changed. Apart from their numbers data also show stability in qualitative information gathered on their profiles (age groups, gender, details about their life on the street, access to rights, ressources…). 

What is new about the 2020 Night of Solidarity survey, is a question on having an address for receiving post and another question concerning the new or repeated nature of people living on the street which helped to shed light on access to rights and the life journeys of homeless people in the streets of Paris. Half of the people questioned said they had an address for receiving postal mail. Also half the people questioned were in the street for the first time while the other half had experienced numerous episodes of having no housing solution, this raises questions related to health, ageing and non-assistance for homeless people.

This first cycle of three Nights of Solidarity have allowed a counting process of people on the streets to be validated which in 2018 had never been done before in France. Now new perspectives can be imagined for the years to come, such as spreading the count to another season than winter. To carry out such an operation in spring or summer could be particularly interesting with the aim of counting and analysing the profiles of people living in the street outside winter time, and particularly to transform the usual image of people obliged to sleep on the street. The next Nights of Solidarity could also directly serve to assess the impact of the health crisis on precariousness and people living in the streets of Paris.

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    Homeless people on the streets in Paris on the night of 30th-31st January 2020

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    Homeless people on the streets in Paris on the night of 30th-31st January 2020 - Analysis of data resulting from a count made on the 3rd Night of Solidarity

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