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PARIS - A new French law will make housing an enforceable right like education, the Government said yesterday after a high-profile protest by a lobby group forced the issue of homelessness to the top of the media agenda.
The plight of the homeless has become a campaign issue ahead of this year's presidential election after a group calling itself the Children of Don Quixote set up a tent encampment in central Paris to draw attention to people sleeping rough.
The issue has dominated the news and forced politicians from all main parties to promise more help for those without a roof over their heads.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said a draft law, allowing those who cannot find a flat to seek legal redress, would be presented to the Cabinet on January 17.
"This is a principle which will put the right to housing on the same level as the right to medical care or education," Villepin said. "It will make France one of the most advanced countries in the area of social rights."
The law would apply to the homeless, poor workers and single mothers from the end of next year and be extended to all people living in unhealthy and unfit homes from 2012, Villepin said.
About 86,500 people are homeless in France, according to official figures from 2001.
Aid groups say more than 3 million people have serious housing difficulties - living on the street, in shabby hotels, caravans or in flats without bathrooms or heating.
The Children of Don Quixote started the current debate by setting up dozens of red tents along Paris' Canal Saint Martin, asking Parisians to sleep out in the cold in solidarity.
The Government has already promised more money and longer opening hours for shelters, but Don Quixote say that is not enough, calling on authorities to open shelters 24 hours a day throughout the year and to build more social housing.
Highlighting the intensity of the debate, President Jacques Chirac referred to the issue in his New Year's address, saying the right to housing had to become a reality. The two main candidates for this year's vote have also entered the fray.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate, has vowed that no homeless person would have to sleep outside within two years of his taking office.
The Socialists' Segolene Royal has called for a "vast plan to fight against economic insecurity".
Surveys show Sarkozy and Royal equally matched ahead of the two-round election in April and May.
France's housing crisis became the subject of media attention in 2005, when fires in crowded rundown Paris buildings killed almost 50 people, many of them immigrants and children.
- REUTERS
