The Other Side of the Medal: Homelessness, Evictions and the Paris 2024 Olympics

Timeline

1. 13 Mar 2023The interior and housing ministries issue guidelines for regional temporary reception centres (sas).
2. Apr 2023Some 400 people are removed from a squat near the Olympic Village on L'Île-Saint-Denis.
3. 24 May 2023Housing minister Olivier Klein denies that a sporting event is a pretext for the transfers.
4. Oct 2023Charities form Le Revers de la Médaille to denounce 'social cleansing.'
5. 17 Apr 2024France's largest squat, in Vitry-sur-Seine, is evicted and occupants are offered buses to other regions.
6. 3 Jun 2024The collective's report counts 12,545 people evicted from April 2023 to May 2024.
7. 15 Jul 2024The last informal settlements near Olympic venues are cleared; hundreds are housed at temporary sites near Paris.
8. Sep 2024The collective's final count reaches at least 19,526 people evicted since April 2023.

The ethical issues

• Displacement of vulnerable people around mega-events.
• Voluntariness of transfers offered at the point of eviction.
• Government denial versus documented patterns.
• Event image and security versus human dignity.
• Legacy promises and who benefits from them.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder	Interests & obligations
Homeless people and migrants	Shelter, stability and access to services and work.
French state and prefectures	Public order and managing emergency housing.
City of Paris	Humane treatment and adequate shelter.
Charities and NGOs	Protecting rights and documenting abuses.
Host regions and towns	Capacity and consultation.
IOC and organizers	A successful, reputable Games.

The case

On 17 April 2024, the day after the Olympic flame was lit in Greece, French authorities began evicting hundreds of people from the country’s largest squat, in Vitry-sur-Seine south of Paris. Occupants were encouraged to board buses to other parts of France.^[5] A Sudanese refugee with a ten-year residence permit and a building-site job in Paris was sent to a temporary centre in Orléans, 130 km away. “I felt like a prisoner in that place,” he told France 24. After three weeks, he had to leave without an alternative. He had lost his place in the squat and his job.^[5] Charities called it “social cleansing” before the Games. The government said it was emergency housing policy.^[1][2][5] The case asks what a host city owes its most vulnerable residents when it prepares for a global event.

Background

Emergency shelter in the Paris region was overcrowded. Housing minister Olivier Klein said in 2023 that “nearly 100,000” of France’s 200,000 emergency places were in Île-de-France.^[4] On 13 March 2023, the interior and housing ministries issued guidelines for regional temporary reception centres, known as “sas.” Each can take up to 50 people for a target period of three weeks while their administrative situation is assessed.^[2][5] The Loiret prefecture said its regional centre had taken 519 people in ten months. It referred 146 to asylum accommodation and 335 to emergency housing, while the rest left voluntarily. It stated that the scheme was “unrelated to the organisation of the Olympic Games.”^[2]

Klein said: “No one is using a sporting event as a pretext to solve a humanitarian problem.” He said transfers were for volunteers, who would be better supported outside Paris.^[4] Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra said in March 2024: “This has nothing to do with the Olympic and Paralympic Games, there’s no social cleansing.”^[5]

What happened

In October 2023, more than 80 charities formed Le Revers de la Médaille (“the other side of the medal”). Its spokesperson, from Médecins du Monde, said evictions “were not created with the Olympic Games in mind,” but that their frequency and the systematic transfers to other regions had changed.^[5] Its June 2024 report counted 12,545 people evicted in the Paris region from April 2023 to May 2024, up 38.5% on 2021–22. Of these, 3,434 were minors.^[1] It described a “double dispersal”: keeping people from forming visible camps in Paris and moving them to other regions.^[1] Data from an eviction observatory showed forced-removal orders rising from 15 in 2021–22 to almost 50 in the year to April 2024.^[5]

France’s independent Defender of Rights opened an inquiry into evictions of people deemed “undesirable.” The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing compared the evictions to those around other mega-events.^[5] Paris City Hall said emergency accommodation was a state responsibility and that its own principle was “no eviction without also providing an alternative solution.” The police prefecture said its measures were “appropriate, necessary and proportionate.”^[5] Regional officials were critical too. Strasbourg’s deputy mayor said: “It’s more a case of displacing the problem than of solving it.”^[5]

The rules and governance

No Olympic rule addresses host-city homelessness. Evictions follow French law through court or administrative orders. The collective noted the authorities’ “high propensity” to use administrative orders, which accounted for almost 40% of evictions in the year before the Games.^[5] The collective said it would send its report to the Defender of Rights, the European Committee of Social Rights and the UN rapporteur.^[1]

Aftermath

As the Games approached, the policy changed. According to the collective, the last camps near Olympic venues were cleared on 15 July 2024, and hundreds of people were placed in temporary “buffer sites” in the Paris region instead of being sent elsewhere.^[3] The Independent found that many people had stopped boarding the buses. The city was sheltering several hundred displaced children in gymnasiums.^[6] The collective’s final count was at least 19,526 people evicted from 260 sites between April 2023 and September 2024, including 4,550 minors. It awarded France a “gold medal for social washing” and said its proposals had found little support.^[3] The prefectures continued to deny any link to the Games.^[3]

The core dilemma

When a city prepares for a mega-event, may authorities clear public space and relocate vulnerable people, even under a general housing policy? Or does the event create a special duty to protect them?

Competing values

Dignity and the right to housing stand against public order and security. Voluntary choice stands against choices made under pressure. National burden-sharing stands against local ties to work, services and community.

Strongest arguments

For the state: Paris’s shelters were overwhelmed, and the regional centres gave assessment and referrals to hundreds of people.^[2][4] Many evictions also reflected safety concerns.^[5]

For the critics: Evictions rose sharply as the Games approached, minors were heavily affected, and some orders cited Olympic reasons.^[1][3] Temporary transfers often ended back on the street.^[3][5]

Applying the frameworks

Rights

A rights lens asks whether relocations respected dignity, freedom of movement and the right to adequate housing. It questions whether consent is real at 6 a.m. during an eviction.^[6]

Ethics of care

Care ethics looks at relationships and dependence: people cut off from jobs, schools and support organizations.^[5][6] Care favors local, stable solutions.

Utilitarian

A consequentialist compares a smooth Games and decongested shelters against harm to thousands. The late switch to local sites suggests better options were available.^[3]

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

1. What are the facts? The sas system, the eviction counts, the official denials and the pre-Games shift to local sites.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}
2. Who are the stakeholders? Homeless people and migrants, the state, the city, charities, host regions and Olympic organizers.
3. What are the options? Continue transfers; create local shelter; or pause non-urgent evictions until after the Games.
4. Which values are in conflict? Dignity against order; consent against administrative convenience.
5. What do the frameworks suggest? Rights and care favor local, voluntary solutions. Utility depends on what alternatives existed.
6. What would you decide and why? Decide as the Paris prefect in spring 2024.

What’s settled and what’s contested

Settled: The existence of the sas centres, the major evictions and the collective’s counts.^[1][2][3][5]

Contested: Whether the Olympics drove the policy, and whether transfers were voluntary.^[1][2][4][5]

Why this case matters

Compare with Qatar’s World Cup migrant labor and the Seine’s water quality. Each shows the costs of a mega-event that fall outside the venues.

Key terms

Sportswashing

Using sport, through events, teams or sponsorship, to improve the reputation of a state or company and distract from wrongdoing.

Stakeholders

Everyone with something at stake in a decision: athletes, coaches, parents, officials, fans, employees, sponsors, media, communities and regulators, including the less visible ones.

Consent and autonomy

Whether people have agreed freely and with full information, and whether their right to make their own choices is respected.

Prevent, minimize, mitigate, remedy

An order of priorities for harm: prevent it if possible, then minimize it, mitigate what remains, and remedy what has been done.

Institutional accountability

Structures that make a sport organization explain its decisions and face consequences: clear authority, transparency, appeals, independent oversight and enforcement.

Multiple points of view

Analyzing a dilemma from each stakeholder’s position in turn (athlete, parent, coach, administrator, official, bystander) before reaching your own reasoned view.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

1. Does it matter whether the Games caused the evictions or merely accelerated them?
2. Can a bus seat offered during an eviction be truly voluntary?
3. What responsibility does the IOC have for host-city practices?
4. Was the switch to local sites before the Games a fix or proof of the problem?
5. How should future hosts plan for homeless residents?

Sources

1. Press Release: Paris 2024 Olympics: social cleansing is accelerating — Le Revers de la Médaille
2. Dispositif d'accueil temporaire dédié aux personnes mises à l'abri depuis l'Île-de-France — Préfecture du Loiret
3. The Olympic fight for unhoused and precarious people against Paris 2024's social cleansing — FEANTSA Homeless in Europe magazine
4. Sans-abri déplacés de Paris vers les régions : « Personne ne prend prétexte d'un évènement sportif » — franceinfo
5. French authorities accused of 'social cleansing' of migrants and homeless before Paris Olympics — France 24
6. The side of the Paris Olympics they don't want you to see — The Independent