Contact : E. Lemener

If the "policy thermometer" is a constant in the emergency care of the homeless, the Winter Emergency Plan (Plan d’Urgence Hivernal or PUH) is innovative in officially adapting three formal levels of mobilization based on temperature indicators, real "triggers" that cause state action with respect to this population. The automatization of care for the homeless was built on the humanitarian dimension of the public issue and a shift in the tools of public policy. But the powerful political questioning by the Enfants de Don Quichotte (NGO) during the winter of 2006-2007 finally contradicts this automatization and marginalization of the political dimension it entailed.

First, the introduction of an automatic management mechanism coupled with automatic climate indicators in the care of the homeless corresponds to the importation of civil and sanitary security tools to the domain of social action. This shift is made possible by the convergence of two aspects: a concern to rationalize the management of the homeless and a desire to limit political decision-making in this domain.

Secondly, the study of the implementation of the PUH highlights the limitations of the shift: it has not led to the automatic management of homelessness. The indicators are subject to flexible interpretation, and "spectacle – triggers" in level 2 are mainly a symbolic function in the service of a political communication strategy of the government. This has two consequences for the steering of public action: the advertising of the device counteracts the automatic functioning and produces unexpected effects contrary to the logic of automatization. The PUH is a way to reaffirm the partnership with the “official” associations in charge of services for the homeless, and the coordination of their actions. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of emergency thus alienates the critical force of these associations, which moves toward associations outside of the management of the homeless, such as the Enfants de Don Quichotte association.

Finally, the social movement of the Enfants de Don Quichotte seriously calls the mechanization of care for the homeless into question: it institutionalizes what the PUH creators had tried to avoid; that is to say, the problematization of the question as an issue requiring a political solution, and the establishment of a legal framework of state responsibility. This collective mobilization initiated change in the care policy of the homeless from a humanitarian conception to a conception in terms of social justice and law.

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Article

"Les enfants de Don Quichotte et le Plan d'urgence hivernale", Schvartz A., Raison Présente, 170, p. 79-90.