Housing is a right, even in Calais.
We are a group of people from different countries fighting for everyone’s right to dignified and safe housing. We are currently occupying, for over 48 hours, some of the many buildings in the city of Calais that sit empty and wasted while people sleep on the streets.
We occupy these spaces hoping to break the vicious cycle of state and police violence and dehumanisation that continues in Calais and across the world to enforce national borders. We aim to create an open space free from state violence and discrimination, where someone’s administrative status has no impact on their ability to have their basic needs met, experience solidarity, and live in dignity.
In Calais around 1500 people live on the streets in unacceptable living conditions. Displaced people occupy vacant lots and have limited access to basic needs: accommodation, sanitation, water, food and medical care. The State enforces conditions of extreme precariousness and invisibilisation through illegal evictions every 48 hours, theft of personal effects by the police, illegal dismantling without the possibility of defending themselves before a judge, recurrent police violence. French and British governments, Natacha Bouchard and all their puppets, have deliberately turned a political question into an humanitarian crisis, maintaining people who want to cross the border in a situation of survival.
In addition, the work of associations is systematically hampered by the State: regular identity checks and searches of vehicles, intimidations, large stones blocking access to distribution points, as well as prefectural and municipal decrees prohibiting the distribution of foodstuffs. The work of the people standing in solidarity at the border is put under so much pressure that the struggle for housing is sidelined.
We recall that housing is a fundamental right and that there can be no evictions of the spaces we inhabit without an enforceable court decision and that an eviction is not part of the investigative acts provided for in the flagrance framework. We demand the end of all evictions in Calais, in particular evictions in the context of flagrance and the dismantling of places of life by forced so-called “Mises a l’Abri”. We demand the regularisation of all the squats in the city. We demand an end to the harassment of people stuck at the border, as well as the people who support them, by the police. Finally, we demand the immediate requisition of all empty buildings in Calais and that concerted and lasting solutions be offered to all inhabitants, regardless of their administrative status or their vulnerability.
We ask every person that stands in solidarity with people living in the streets and people who are stuck at the border, every person that believes in right to housing, to come and help us defend the buildings we are occupying!
The occupiers / Housing for All Calais
calaislogementpourtoustes [at] riseup [dot] net
Refugees related groups in France https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/FR/topic/sans-papiers
Some squats in France: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/FR/squated/squat
Groups (collectives, social centres, squats) in France: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/FR
Events in France: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/FR
