PARIS — French authorities opened up a brand new refugee camp center last month in the north of Paris.

The 400-bed center, located in a vast concrete warehouse on a former industrial zone, offers single men a temporary refuge for up to 10 days, until the government has worked out a more permanent solution for them.

“I came to the center after five days sleeping outdoors, on the street, near the bridge”, Osman, a 19-year-old asylum-seeker from Sudan, told Reuters in Arabic.

French authorities are touting the center, which has been set up at a cost of $7 million as a model for others to follow.

In just 18 months, from June 2015 to November 2016, thirty makeshift camps have been cleared in Paris, with authorities providing emergency shelter for 22,000 migrants, according to a town hall spokesman.

Three weeks after the opening of this new center, such camps are no longer springing up, authorities say. Several NGOs working with migrants worry, though, that with its limited capacity, the center might not solve the problem in the long-run. 

For now, authorities say the center is running smoothly, and is trying to ensure that all newcomers are housed quickly. 

By November 24, some 1,253 people had passed through the center’s welcome point – an inflatable bubble designed by a German architect -, with families, women and unaccompanied minors being redirected to other government-sponsored housing.

More than 700 men, coming mostly from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan have been accommodated already on the site in wooden cabins accommodating four men each.