Paris, 8th October 2025
Crouched in a tent, I help my 4-year-old daughter take off her shoes and trousers, then wash her with baby wipes. There aren’t any showers in this emergency shelter, only sinks for washing up or brushing your teeth.
“Mummy, the toothpaste stings.” “It can’t, it’s strawberry flavour,” I repeat. We cling to the little everyday things as best we can, but Eva is well aware of the situation. When there’s a watercolour activity, she always paints a house and asks to go home. We were evicted from our home on the 2nd May. Since then, we’ve been staying at the camp in Bagnolet, in the Parisian suburbs, my daughter thinks we’re on holiday because we’re sleeping in a tent.
At 6:45 the next morning, the alarm clock rings. I begin my day by taking care of Eva. Often, her sleep is interrupted by the cries of the babies next to her. Everything is a rush. I do her hair in a ponytail, put on her sweatshirt, and pack her little backpack with a small brioche and carton of juice.
We leave for her nursery which is in another town. It’s an hour and a half’s journey. First, the underground, then the overground. I can tell she’s tired from her crying and tantrums. She can’t take it anymore, she’s exhausted.
And I’m stressed, every day, I call 115 — the emergency accommodation number in France. The situation has been the same for a month: there are no places available. Or they don’t answer.
So then I go and meet the Utopia 56 charity. The meeting point is in front of Paris City Hall. They make a list of the people in situations of difficulty who need accommodation for the night. I wait my turn.
At 8:12 p.m., I find out that we’ve been given a place in the shelter for the night, in the warm under a tent with real mattresses and blankets. What a relief! Often, when we don’t get a place and we have to sleep outside or in a hospital lobby to be safe.
The hardest part is accepting that, at 44 years old, this is just one of life’s mishaps. For four years, I gave my time to others. I helped people with disabilities and elderly people at home and in nursing homes. By repeating these daily tasks, which were sometimes heavy, I developed tendonitis, which forced me to stop. Everything happened very quickly after that: unemployment, separation from my daughter’s father, followed by the inability to pay my rent… The landlord set up a payment plan and then started eviction proceedings. It was such a shock that I ended up in A&E, on a drip. I found myself in a completely different world, one in which I could no longer give my daughter stability.
Sixteen weeks ago, I received some good news: I’m going to get a flat in the town of La Queue-en-Brie, in Val-de-Marne, an hour from Paris by public transport. Eva will change schools as soon as I get the keys, probably in early October. I still can’t quite believe it, but I feel reassured.
