LYON – As the 2026 municipal elections approach, the city of Lyon faces a deepening humanitarian crisis: hundreds of children are sleeping on the streets, in cars, squats, or makeshift camps. This alarming situation, far from being an isolated incident, has become a structural problem, directly linked to the state’s disengagement from emergency housing, according to the ‘Jamais Sans Toit’ collective.
The State’s Failure and the Burden on Civil Society
Every night, the 115 emergency number turns away families with children due to a lack of available beds. Every morning, children arrive at school exhausted, ill, and unable to focus, their basic needs unmet. This compromises their right to education and their future, directly implicating public authorities in their extreme precarity.
In the face of this systemic failure, civil society has stepped up. Parents, teachers, and neighbors, united under the ‘Jamais Sans Toit’ banner, have refused to let children sleep outside. They provide shelter in their homes, organize solidarity snacks to fund hotel nights, and even spend nights in schools. However, this generosity is reaching its limits.
Initially conceived as temporary emergency solutions to pressure public authorities, school occupations – numbering 25 in December – have become an unofficial housing system. Many children have been housed in schools for over a year, highlighting the prolonged nature of the crisis.
Schools Are Not Homes: A Stark Reality
As the collective emphasizes, “A school is not a home.” Living conditions in these makeshift shelters are spartan, often lacking proper mattresses, showers, or kitchens. Parents and infants are forced to wander from 7 AM to 7 PM. This situation is unacceptable for families, unfair to educational staff, and untenable for the collectives.
On Friday, January 9, the collective made a decisive move, leaving the schools to occupy disused prefabricated buildings in Blandan Park, 7th arrondissement. Thirty families were secured there, with citizens providing food, hygiene products, administrative and medical support, and organizing activities for 76 children. This demonstrates the extent to which civil society is forced to act in the absence of institutional response.
A Direct Appeal to Municipal Candidates
Solidarity cannot replace public policy; it cannot, by itself, compensate for the state’s abandonment. By allowing citizens to patch up the breaches, public authorities are causing collective exhaustion and normalizing the unacceptable.
As the municipal elections draw near, the ‘Jamais Sans Toit’ collective directly challenges Lyon’s candidates. It is no longer sufficient to invoke a lack of communal competence. Since cities already bear the material consequences of child homelessness, their political responsibility is already engaged. Municipalities are on the front line: schools open at night, occupied municipal buildings, mobilized staff, and constant mediation. The question is no longer whether the commune can act, but how it will do so.
Demands for Action: Beyond Rhetoric
Acting means refusing to let a child sleep outside. It means tolerating and supervising the humanitarian occupation of public buildings when no other solution exists, ensuring heating and access to water, and mobilizing vacant municipal heritage and unoccupied staff housing. It means ensuring school continuity, access to canteens, leisure centers, and dignified social support. It also means renouncing evictions without rehousing solutions and recognizing, securing, and supporting solidarity initiatives, rather than leaving them to bear the burden of the emergency alone.
The collective is not asking municipalities to substitute for the state, but to assume their political responsibilities in a context of prolonged humanitarian emergency. Where the state withdraws, the city must commit.
A Public Debate on February 2nd
To further this critical discussion, the collective invites municipal candidates to a round table on Monday, February 2nd. Animated by students from Sciences Po and the Centre de Formation des Journalistes, this event will provide an opportunity for candidates to present their priorities and commitments regarding child homelessness, fostering a pluralistic and constructive debate.
In Lyon, no municipal campaign can ignore the reality of children living without a roof. The right to grow up in shelter must become a central commitment of the next mandate. Because a child cannot wait. Because solidarity must never become an alibi for public inaction.
Source: actu.fr
