Loitering within tent in Paris

PARIS - Paris is wrestling between its conscience and the tourist dollar as it tries gently to remove hundreds of tents distributed to street people last winter.

Seven months ago, Medecins du Monde handed out 300 "igloo" tents to the homeless, and another 150 were handed out by other volunteers.

Initial plaudits for this move have changed to brickbats. With the tourist season in full flow and the city gripped by a 38C heatwave, the hump-backed tents have become grubby and smelly, and alcoholism and fights between derelicts are common.

In short, the tents, once a curiosity, are now eyesores in the manicured squares of the Left Bank, on the boulevards and the banks of the Seine, where two beaches of sand have been set up in the annual "Paris Plage".

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, is now having to figure out how to quietly get rid of the tents and shelter the homeless while at the same time shielding city hall from charges of flint-heartedness or selling out to the tourist business.

"I'm not trying to drive out the homeless, I'm trying to support them," Delanoe says. "But at the same time, I also have to respond to the requests of local residents.

"Nobody should feel that their security, their hygiene, their right to dignity are at threat, whether they are homeless people or local residents."

Twelve tents in the swank 15th district have already been dismantled on the grounds that they presented a health risk in the extreme heat.

Four tents near the Gare du Nord station mysteriously burned down, although they were empty at the time.

But fearing a media disaster for the city, Delanoe has declined to send in the police, preferring instead to ask two associations to encourage tent dwellers to move into fixed shelters.

MDM handed out the tents to publicise its opposition to these shelters. The buildings are open from nightfall to daybreak, which means homeless people must wander around the city all day with their belongings until the shelter opens in the evening.

MDM's Graciela Robert said the group would keep up the pressure and hand out more tents.

Tensions are such that the government has appointed a mediator - Agnes de Fleurieu, chairman of the National Poverty Monitor - to engineer a solution.