Homeless women: at risk of the streets and mixed accommodation centers

On the change.org platform, a petition has continued to attract signatories for nearly four years. With nearly 410,000 signatures, it is now on the verge of becoming one of the most signed on the platform. Launched at the end of 2017, it calls for reception centers to put homeless women in safety. “I was the first overwhelmed by the movement, exclaims Sarah Frikh, president of the Réchauffons nos SDF association and whistleblower, at the origin of the text. I saw the petition explode with signatures, messages, requests for advice on how to help women", explains the one whose initial objective was to federate on this "dramatic situation" and to be able to exchange with the government on the urgency to act.

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According to the annual survey of the city of Paris, 10 to 15% of homeless people are women. A rate that can be extrapolated at the national level: "It's a fairly reliable figure and we see the same thing at 115, where calls from single women are around 10%", comments Florent Guéguen, director of the Federation of Actors of solidarity. However, absolute precision is difficult to achieve: according to an INSEE survey, in 2012 two out of five homeless people were women.

Since the launch of the petition, centers dedicated to women have opened. This is the case of the Cité des dames, established since December 2018 in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, and which offers a welcome with social, administrative and health assessments. But its director, Christophe Piedra, regrets that the establishment is “undersized in relation to needs” and lacks financial means. The initial mission is not fulfilled either. “This structure was designed as a first-line reception for women who are very anchored in the street and far from support structures, explains Christophe Piedra. But today, our vast majority audience are women who have less than a year on the street.

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Sihem Habchi, director of the Regional Women's House, opened in November 2020 in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, and director of activities within the Paris-Nord territory of the Aurore association, pleads for a reinforcement support around mental health and addictions. Because if in its center, places are reserved for women in the street that the volunteers go to look for during the maraudes, "to set foot in the accommodation center and stay there, it is only the beginning of the course", recalls- she. “We need to have the means to start the journey towards stabilization,” continues Sihem Habchi.

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Initiatives to be developed in all metropolitan areas

Although the first association dedicated to homeless women was born in Grenoble at the end of 2000, the reception centers dedicated to women are mainly rooted in Parisian region. “There are initiatives that are being set up, but it is true that there are very few specifically female accommodations, or else it is for women who are victims of violence, which is a different problem”, notes Maïwenn Abjean. , director of the association Femmes SDF in Grenoble. In Bordeaux, a day center opened in 2018. “We wanted to provide answers that correspond to their needs, after realizing that no reception center was dedicated to women in Bordeaux and that they 'didn't go to the mixed centres,' explains Berthille Moreau-Printemps, president and co-founder of the association Tous à l'abri. If the association began by doing “rough work”, in the premises of another association one day a week, it will soon welcome homeless women three days a week within its own walls.

To multiply these initiatives, the association Femmes SDF is working on a networking project in order to allow an "exchange of practices, operations, to bring up the experiences of women, the unmet needs and to support the creation of other places,” explains Maïwenn Abjean. Because the needs are numerous and a certain number of women still escape the care of the associations. "The longer women stay on the street, the more their days are numbered if we want to avoid the deterioration of their state of health, the trauma of physical violence and sexual assault", warns Sihem Habchi.

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“Women on the street isolate themselves, blend in with the crowd, because their first need is to protect themselves, not to be noticed, analyzes Nadège Passereau, general delegate of the Agir pour la santé association. women (ADSF). Many women testify to us that after three days they lost their papers and were victims of attacks. According to the ADSF's inventory of the health of women in very precarious situations in Ile-de-France, 80% of the sample studied of 1,001 women reported having suffered violence.

Inadequate mixed structures

Florent Guéguen also notes that the majority of women on the street no longer call 115 today, due to “previously bad experiences” in mixed centres. "It takes a lot of work of conviction and support for access to accommodation," he admits. Sarah Frikh evokes rapes, beatings, humiliations experienced by the women she meets. For her, "they have nothing to do there, the mixture of men and women is only if they are stabilized emotionally and physically".

To be able to best meet the needs of wandering women, it is therefore a development of mixed places that we must also be able to offer. "The mix exists, we are in society, but it is our duty to act on its ills, to rethink our spaces to secure the places a little better and offer better conditions of access to women", considers Christophe Piedra , also director of the Cité du refuge, a mixed integration complex located alongside the Cité des dames. In October 2019, a report by the Women's Foundation studied the situation of women in mixed emergency accommodation centers and made proposals for their improvement. Among these: “develop non-mixed collective spaces and times” and better “security of exterior access to university hospitals”.

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