Homeless New Mother Finds Temporary Shelter Amid Housing Crisis in Limoges

Fatima and the associations supporting her were able to savor a small victory last Thursday. A first victory, certainly, but ephemeral when one considers the hardship of the conditions in which she finds herself with her newborn. Indeed, Fatima did not have the joy that surrounds motherhood.

Her ordeal began at the Mother and Child Hospital (HME) where she gave birth to little Llyes, 5 days earlier. Here, she was clearly told: "There is no housing solution for you," reports the French media, Le populaire.

From then on, hell began for this 34-year-old mother, a Moroccan student with a master’s degree, confronted with the vagaries of a path she had thought she had well prepared and which had finally plunged her into extreme loneliness.

Now alone on the streets of Limoges, which she hardly knows, Fatima and her baby had no other alternative than to sleep on the street or more precisely in the Bénédictins train station district. However, in this Avenue de la Libération where other homeless families are transiting, Fatima measured the extent of the risk. "At night, there are all kinds of people in the train station area, some have been drinking, others are strange, so with a tiny baby, it’s not safe..."

The "Chabatz d’entrar" Collective estimates that 200 places would need to be created in Haute-Vienne to cope with the influx of people in an irregular situation. For Angel, a CGT union official and volunteer with the Collective, all these people who find themselves in precariousness do not choose such living conditions, far from their roots, just for the pleasure of coming to France...".

The other psychological shock experienced by Fatima was this hallucinating proposal that she would have been made: to separate from her baby who would be placed in a home and to fend for herself. "I felt like an abusive mother, I cried a lot...," confides the young mother.

Fatima and her baby can rejoice, however, in finally having access to the emergency accommodation system, this after the fight of the "Chabatz d’entrar" Collective which has always been by her side. Llyes and his mother were welcomed at a hotel on the evening of August 22, 2019, for a period of three months, renewable once.