Elderly Scrap Dealer Faces Eviction from Makeshift Dump in Northern France

Wild boars crossing the road, a pile of tires, scrap metal, utility vehicle wrecks... An 82-year-old scrap metal dealer, living on Rue de Dreville in Raismes and followed by social services since 2017, has turned the perimeter of his house, ravaged by flames on September 1, 2022, into an open-air dump, on the side of the Bois-au-Prince, reports La Voix du Nord. "A person is occupying the public domain, without right, having transformed it into an open-air dump," indicates the municipality.

Despite the rehousing proposals, the old man refuses to leave this unsanitary site. "Five rehousing proposals have met with five categorical refusals on his part," the mayor of Raismes, Aymeric Robin, specifies in a letter. The Moroccan consulate has contacted his children but they "have not given any news". Countless actions by the social mediator, municipal agents, the deputy in charge of housing "have not met with the expected and hoped-for success," the municipality adds. Realizing the situation, it intends, despite itself, to evict the Moroccan octogenarian. "This solution has, until now, been postponed so as not to put this gentleman in a psychological situation that could endanger him, given his age and his pathology."