While temperatures of 35°C are forecast in Paris these days, pregnant women and homeless newborns are among those most exposed to health risks linked to high heat. How can we apply prevention recommendations – staying cool, hydrating properly, avoiding going out at the hottest times or protecting infants – when we do not have stable housing?
In France, thousands of children are born homeless every year. In 2025, there would be at least 3,500 in Île-de-France. This chilling figure is the marker of a brutal and intolerable reality: pregnant women and families with newborns live today without a stable accommodation solution, tossed from one structure to another, sometimes even forced to return to the street.
Aggravating risk factors
These tragic situations reflect the limits of an emergency accommodation system which forces field professionals to make impossible daily decisions between equally urgent situations. They directly expose these women and their newborns to major health and social risks, and lastingly compromise life trajectories.
In a national context already marked by a deterioration in perinatal health indicators, homeless women and their children accumulate aggravating risk factors: residential instability, degraded living conditions, protean violence, breakdowns in care pathways, social isolation, etc.
We, leaders of Samu social de Paris and Solipam and with Unicef France, warn of the alarming consequences of these extremely precarious situations for the health of the mother and child, such as medical complications, an increased rate of neonatal mortality, psychological distress or even a situation of malnutrition.
Guarantee stable accommodation
For several years, however, public authorities have affirmed the importance of the first 1,000 days as a determining period for the development of the child and the prevention of inequalities. But this ambition remains incomplete since pregnant women and newborns are left without a lasting and appropriate accommodation solution.
These findings call for immediate responses. We ask for the guarantee of stable, continuous and suitable accommodation for pregnant women and families with newborns. This care must be associated with coordinated support between healthcare and social actors, before, during and after birth, an essential condition to avoid disruptions and respond to the complexity of individual situations.
Protect life
Protecting these mothers and infants requires resources commensurate with the emergency. Concretely, this involves a significant strengthening of accommodation capacities adapted to this public, as well as supporting teams sufficiently equipped, recognized and trained to carry out their missions.
At a time when ministerial work is underway to rethink the perinatal health system, the situation of homeless women and their children can no longer constitute a blind spot in the public debate. It must be integrated as an explicit priority of the future action plan. Accepting that babies are born without shelter means collectively renouncing one of our most fundamental obligations: protecting life from its first moments.
To find out more
Understanding the social situation as well as the physical and psychological health of homeless women in the perinatal period, Samu social de Paris and Solipam Network, Ramblière Lison, Iasagkasvili Maria, March 2026.
“Growing up without a home. When homelessness endangers children’s mental health”, 2022.
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