Camping In France - a last resort

For somebody a mobile home can be the only option in winter

And now to France, where more and more people are living in camping grounds year round. Households and single people on low income have to spend years on waiting lists for years before being offered low cost state apartments. Meanwhile rents in the private sector have skyrocketed, and landlords are expecting a long list of guarantees from tenants. This means that even people who have jobs are struggling to find a roof. Hence the camping site alternative. More than a hundred thousand people have chosen this option. Radio France International has met some of them in the Essonne area, fifty kilometres south of Paris.

The Camping des Aubins is where thirty six year old Rénald, his girlfriend Nadège, and his eight year old child, live year round. The camping ground is in the woods, there is a river running alongside, and it’s completely fenced off, so it’s convenient for children. It’s chilly outside, but the camping site is busy.

"I’m Angelique from the far end of the camping site….I am in the process of divorcing, the procedure has been going on for fourteen years now and I owe a lot of money to my lawyers. I work, but for temping agencies, I don’t have a full time jobs and that’s not good enough for landlords. I had very little money and nowhere to go, so I considered the camping ground option. At first I thought it would be temporary, that I would stay here for a couple of months but it’s my fourth year here already."

59 year old Angélique burst into tears in the middle of the interview, Rénald and Nadège were there to comfort her. Other than living in a trailer or in a caravan, people at the Camping des Aubins have one more thing in common. They’re all trying to recover from their wounds.

Jacques is an Elvis Presley fan. He chose to live here because he knew that 640 Euros a month would not get him very far, that’s a months’ rent for a 20 square meter flat in Paris. He survived his depression thanks to his neighbours.

I was ill I was paralysed, then I divorced, I could no longer work as a cook because I suffered memory loss, I couldn’t afford living in a flat, too expensive. I was depressed when I arrived here but that’s behind me now, I am no longer on prescription medication, we’re like a family here we always help each other out.

See that’s my neighbour’s house, he is keen on fishing… you want us to pay him a visit?

Jacque’s neighbour Michel arrived two years ago. He is a former electrician but had to stop. He lost a lung because of an asbestos related disease he caught on construction sites. He is quite pleased with the way he has arranged his thirty square meter trailer.

I have a fridge, a freezer, an electric oven, an old style dresser, a small dining room. Behind us it’s the living room with a small stereo for the wife’s music, toilets and a shower, a small kitchen corner you see there’s a sink, and yes, the fish, it’s for my neighbour, he is the one who cooks it.

It’s believed that between seventy five thousand and a hundred fifty thousand people live in camping sites year round in France. It is illegal, but the authorities are turning a blind eye, because they have nothing better to offer them. Joey Sacco is head of an organisation called Halem. He says the government should give him and his friends more rights.

"One does not have the right to housing allowance in mobile housing."

What about your official address, do you have one?

"No, not in most cases. Most camping sites don’t allow you to use the camping’s address, because in fact it’s illegal for them to have people living on camping sites all year round."

Without an official address it’s difficult to open a bank account, register to vote, or enrol children in schools. Members of parliament are considering rewriting the law, but not in the direction Joey Sacco would like them to. If an amendment put forward by the ruling UMP party goes through, people living in caravans and trailers, will have one more hurdle: they will no longer be exempt from the so called “local occupancy tax”.