From Tokyo to Paris, when the Olympics hide the homeless

Go home. It’s always hard for them to tell. To have and not to have. A house, a roof, a shelter. Homeless in Paris. Sans-abris à Paris. It’s everyone’s problem Olympiad: where to put those who live on the street? The others go on vacation in the summer, they don’t. And they ruin the image of the city: you light up the Eiffel Tower, they put out the cigarette butts on the cartons, you clean up the Seine, they dirty the boulevards, you exhibit fashion, they rags. Not good, even without the myth of grandeur. The cities are keen to show off their beautiful postcards so much so that the “Count” Victor Lustig, he was not but he presented himself as a great gentleman, on April 27th 1936 he ended up on a ferry crossing the bay of San Francisco, to Alcatraz Island. With chains on the wrists. Great guy, but above all an incredible fraudster: he spoke five languages, had 47 aliases and a dozen false passports. In 1925 in Paris, posing as a government official, he managed to sell the Eiffel Tower twice to the highest bidder, due to demolition due to technical failures and costly repairs. Not a bad business. Today to spoil the glitter of the Tour are the old and new miserable. The French government would like them to move out somewhere for the Olympic period, perhaps in the Île-de-France region, where there is more availability. In Paris there are about 5,000 rooms of accommodation facilities available for emergencies, but the owners want them back to rent to tourists. Homeless people, step further. It is interesting to note how the years go by, indeed the decades, and the solutions are always the same: to hide, not to solve. Allez-y, goshoo.

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In ’96 ad Atlanta the Olympic plan included an ingenious solution: to offer a Greyhound bus ticket, the one with the greyhound logo, to any destination in America. You got it right, one way ticket. One way, no return. A free deportation with a choice: where do you want us to hunt you? With the humanitarian motivation: don’t you have someone from your family you want to see again? In the 18 months leading up to the Games, 9,000 people were arrested to clean up the city and dismantled Techwood, the nation’s first public housing project, that area served for new investors. Yet it was Atlanta, the city of Coca-Cola, of Reverend Martin Luther King, of Cnn. Black city, very black, with 68% of the population of color. On one side the black ghetto of Vine, on the other the white ghetto of Cabbagetown. That’s right, “Cabbage Town”, because only that was eaten by the workers of its cotton mill. In the ghettos the same type of houses, rooms one in a row, called “shot-gun houses”, a single pistol shot was enough to kill the whole family, saving on bullets.

For the Beijing Games in 2008 same problem, but simpler solution: tear down any image of the old traditional city, send its occupants back to their original areas. Destroyed the hutongs, equivalent of the low Neapolitans, social and historical places (Yuan dynasty), alleys, curves, outdoor life, houses built around a square courtyard, originally a well. Almost 4,400 narrow streets, which made up the historic centre, all demolished. It’s a shame because in Lishi Hutong, behind the Forbidden City, no one will ever see Ms. Liu, a former textile worker, frying chicken and green beans in the alley on a black, encrusted pan. She lived with her husband, her son with his wife and daughter, in two rooms, without a toilet, a shower outside (in the summer), pajamas hanging out on the street, a hundred euro pension. There was everything under her bed, her wedding photo with Mr. Fu on the wall. A cheerful memory: “We were poor, we were hungry, but at least we ate that day”. Menu for the evening: boiled corn on the cob and rice. The public bath (Turkish style) for the rest. The old China not to be seen because the new China was running towards the future. Far from misery, from Ms. Liu, from her red lanterns.

But the homeless do not all have the same choreography. There are those lost in translation. The damages of life are the same, but the environment is not. The bubbles burst, even the financial one. To the 2002 soccer world cup in Tokyo a melon cost 90 euros. And you had to be in the northeast part of the city, in the Akasaka district, next to the Sumida River, to notice them. Of the three thousand invisible Japanese. Non-existent for statistics, because what do you want that figure to be in a city of 14 million inhabitants? You had to go down, on the walk, look out on the shore, to see them. The homeless made in Japan. Nothing comparable with New York, with Rio, with Rome. The Japanese homeless is a man, he doesn’t ask for alms, he has his own architectural unity, his own rational habitat, nothing out of place. Synthetic curtains, of the same light blue colour, with hangers for jackets and laundry outside, lines hanging, socks to dry, broom hanging, batteries for light (with spare), bins for recycling waste (to be resold), trolley with wheels to not make efforts, bicycle. No bad smells, no dirt, no mess. Almost a stand at the Salone del Mobile, very ecological and minimal. And under the tent: radio and TV. For the rest: internet cafes open 24 hours with showers on site, so much so that the term “cyber-homeless” was born. Poverty lived with decency, without letting go, but with shame. There was Mr. Inoue who first worked in construction and then was reduced to scalping. “I queue for those who do not have time”. So for everyone. Ready to comb his hair in case of photos and to run the electric generator for the additional light. But ay Tokyo Games, played in 2021, with the pandemic, Japan also canceled the discomfort: Ueno Park was dismantled and Mr. Osamu Yamada, who was stationed in the garden around the Olympic stadium, was removed. But someone provided him with a trolley. Not to get too tired. This counts in removals to Five Circles: the shape.