By 11 am on Monday, June 30, it was already 30°C in the Paris’s 14th arrondissement. Two homeless friends, Christophe and Laurent (who did not wish to give their last names), had found a spot of shade across from a storefront closed for renovations. “Last week, I fell asleep in the sun,” Christophe recounted, wearing a gray cap. “When I woke up, I felt really awful: I had heatstroke.” Local shopkeepers and passersby know the two men well, greet them and offer their support, like Alice, a neighborhood resident, and the local pharmacist. Christophe, however, regretted the attitude of the fast-food restaurant on the street. Pointing to a small, narrow path that was now closed off but shaded, he said, “We liked to sit in the shade here, but they put up a barrier.”
Further on, at a bus stop, a homeless woman dressed in pink was surrounded by about 10 suitcases. “She has Diogenes syndrome,” explained Eva Hamza, a social worker at the group Les Enfants du Canal (an NGO that supports the homeless). “She’s exactly the kind of person we need to watch carefully, because she might wear several layers of clothing even when it’s 30°C.” But the woman does not appreciate contact with organizations.
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