PARIS--Just outside a high rise in northeast Paris, Christian Page had found a decent place to sleep: it kept out the rain and a wobbly tile meant he could hear people approach, so the former wine waiter felt a little safer as he bedded down for the night.
There was even the odd home comfort. Every morning, the building’s concierge brought him coffee as he packed up his sleeping bag before wandering away the day.
Then all of a sudden, a concrete box appeared in what had come to be his corner, and he had to find somewhere new to go. “One evening I arrived, and a flower box had taken my place,” Page told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "I was not doing any harm. I was very careful. There was no reason.”
Made homeless after a divorce and evicted in 2015, the one-time sommelier, 45, has since taken to social media to denounce what he and fellow campaigners say is a rising number of “anti-homeless devices” - benches, flower pots and fences that prevent homeless people from setting up camp in public spaces.
Across Europe, many countries have seen the number of homeless people rise since the 2007 financial crisis as a result of austerity measures and rising housing prices. Workers, women and even children – rarely seen on the streets a decade ago – have since become a regular sight, campaigners said.
At the same time, anti-homeless devices and measures to criminalise rough sleeping started emptying city centres: the very place where the homeless can access much-needed support. “If you put together anti-homeless devices and laws against begging, homelessness...camping, the lack of water fountains and toilets... In practice, that drives (homeless people) away,” said Christophe Robert, who heads French homelessness charity Fondation l’Abbe Pierre.
“When we push homeless people away from town centres, we push them away from citizens’ eyes, from charities, from everyone who should collectively be looking for a solution,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in his Paris office.
Earlier this month, a local council leader in the postcard town of Windsor, where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will marry in May, said beggars must be cleared from the streets to avoid presenting the British town in a bad light. In other parts of Britain, such as the popular seaside resort of Brighton, local authorities are enforcing bans on people begging or sleeping in tents - moves that critics say affect homeless people disproportionately.
It is illegal to beg on the streets of Denmark, Greece and Romania, and Sweden is debating following suit. In 2012, Hungary changed its constitution to make homelessness a crime.
In the meantime, campaigners say the number of homeless people has risen across the continent. According to the European Commission, there are an estimated 4.1 million homeless people in the European Union.
The number of people sleeping on the streets in France rose by 50 percent between 2001 and 2012, according to the latest figures from the French statistics agency INSEE. More than 400 homeless people died in France in 2017, according to Morts de la Rue, a campaign group that tracks the deaths.
Last month, cold water sprays installed in a private car park entrance in Paris sparked a nationwide debate. The setup, in a wealthy neighbourhood steps from the iconic Rivoli shopping avenue, sprayed water onto anyone approaching the covered entrance without a resident's permit, effectively driving away homeless people seeking shelter for the night.
Page, the former sommelier, said such measures had become increasingly common in the past two years. Within just a few hundreds meters, he pointed out a bike rack - on which bikes could not be locked - installed where a homeless man had once bedded down, stones embedded near the entrance of a supermarket and short benches at bus stops to prevent anyone getting too comfortable.
