"Du pipeau": in Roubaix, the consultation of working-class neighborhoods welcomed with skepticism

"The objective is to put citizens back at the heart of public policies by starting from their concerns instead", pleads Mohamed Mechmache in front of some 35 people who came to the house of Roubaix associations.

The founder of the ACLEFEU association and the Pas Sans Nous coordination was entrusted by the Minister Delegate for the City and Housing, Olivier Klein, with the presidency of a commission aimed at gathering the voices of the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods to calibrate future city policy.

At the beginning of 2024, the State and the local authorities will have to establish new city contracts, which define the policy in terms of urban renewal, integration or security in priority districts, the previous ones, concluded for the period 2015-2023, arriving eventually.

These new generation contracts, called "2030 Neighborhood Commitments", will be, promises the ministry, more decentralized, and will have to take more account of the voice of the inhabitants.

"Doing without us is doing against us"

But in Roubaix, a popular city to the north of the Lille metropolis, where three quarters of the 100.000 inhabitants live in a priority district, many association activists say they no longer believe in the consultations, exhausted by their fight - so far in vain - against a demolition project. reconstruction in a district, the Alma-gare.

"We want to destroy the neighborhood without us", laments in front of the assistance Florian Vertriest, president of the collective at the forefront of this fight.

“Listen to us, end this mess, please,” he said, turning to an adviser to the minister discreetly seated at the back of the room.

"When people just have the impression of being useless and of being simple little relays, I think it's counterproductive", adds Nassim Sidhoum, president of the association.

"I share your feeling about the fact that too often, we do without us, and to do without us is to do against us", approves Mohamed Mechmache.

"The consultation is a pipe," slice directly one of the participants.

"There is no political will to listen to people," he says. "We treat people this way because they are poor."

A few speakers mentioned other subjects: one asked that urban renewal projects include more concrete measures against discrimination.

If we are content with observations and reports, he said, an elected official who would not want to act, "the reports that stall the cupboards, there are tons of them!"

Several people in the room nod.

Between convinced

Another participant, named Hamza, pleads for the payment at source of social assistance. A third, Eric, demands that the State invest more in social housing.

Without too much hope that it will be followed by effects.

"We are the convinced, between us", notes Réjane Poyé, "and on the other hand, there are the unconvinced who have the power". “We will be told + we listen to what you say + and then we will be broken!”, predicts this white-haired Roubaisienne.

However, the organizers do not feel that they have wasted their time.

"We feel a kind of anger, people who say 'it's useless to participate'", notes Mohamed Mechmache at the exit. "But they still came..."

Gilles Leproust, president of the association of elected officials Ville et Banlieue, sees in the commission "an important element to allow city contracts to be as adapted as possible to the social emergency".

"The best experts in the neighborhoods are the inhabitants themselves", justifies the elected Communist, while regretting that the commission was not launched earlier.

She was indeed to be born at the beginning of the year, but was announced at the beginning of March and her tour of France began at the end of April.

Two consultations took place, in Montpellier and Roubaix. Narbonne is to follow on May 25, and the prefectures will soon receive instructions to organize them themselves in some of the more than 1.400 priority neighborhoods in France.