The authorities desires the richest tenants to go away their HLM; the associations remind us that “housing for life” has “no legal reality” | EUROtoday

Just a few weeks earlier than the presentation of a invoice on housing – which needs to be unveiled in May within the Council of Ministers – the Minister for Housing, Guillaume Kasbarian, introduced in The Echoess, Friday April 12, its intention to encourage the exit from social housing of tenants who’ve “well exceeded the income ceilings”. He intends for social landlords to hold out an everyday and compulsory analysis of “personal, financial and property situation” tenants of social housing.

“When we have 5.2 million social housing units in France and 1.8 million households legitimately applying to enter it, is it normal that they are prevented from doing so when there are people within the social housing whose situation has changed significantly since they were allocated their housing? », asks the former president of the economic affairs committee in the Assembly. According to The echoesGuillaume Kasbarian estimates that more than 8% of the number of HLM tenants would no longer be eligible for social housing if they applied for one today.

“We must re-examine the relevance of continuing to occupy social housing for those who have largely exceeded the income ceilings, have been able to inherit, sometimes have a second home in their possession and whose assets – and this is the meaning of life – has evolved “continues the minister.

“Don’t give in to demagoguery”

In a press release, the Social Union for Housing calls on Mr. Kasbarian to “do not give in to demagoguery” emphasizing that this “the notion of “lifetime housing”, although it may be effective in the media, has no legal reality”. “The minister is right to recognize the reality of the social housing application queue. But it is wrong to consider that it is by “insecure” the tenants of social housing that we will compensate for the inadequacies of the housing policy that we have observed since 2017”lamented the former environmentalist minister Emmanuelle Cosse, who now heads this organization.

“This is a direct and deeply unfair attack on working families in this country”, lamented on his X account the “rebellious” MP for Seine-Saint-Denis, Raquel Garrido, who believes that “the Macronists do everything so that money from work income goes into the pockets of the richest”. In the same tone, the National Housing Confederation criticism in a message on the government project which aims, according to the association, to “pitting the working classes against each other and [à] spare the richest and real estate speculation”.

HLM tenants must in fact already respond annually to a “resource survey” carried out by social landlords to attest to their economic situation. Since the adoption of a law in 2009, the social landlord can thus decide, if the tenants exceed a certain resource ceiling, to increase the rent or refuse to renew the lease. Only tenants aged over 65 and people with disabilities are excluded from this system.

“Facilitating the expulsion of the middle classes from social housing accused of being “too rich” means organizing the ghettoization of our HLM”, judged for his part the communist senator from Paris, Ian Brossat. In his eyes, this would amount to “move from a “generalist” model to a “residential” model in which social housing is only reserved for the most vulnerable, and completely exclude employees”. The proposal, he adds in a press release, “is unspeakably hypocritical, since it suggests that HLM tenants would today be ineligible for eviction. In reality, the government is making social housing tenants pay for its inability to produce social housing.”

Same story with the National Housing Confederation, which regretted on THE “cynicism” of the proposal. “Rather than producing social housing, [Guillaume] Kasbarian prefers to reduce the HLM park and (…) pit the working classes against each other”she continues.

Examination of the text in the Senate in June

The provisions announced by Mr. Kasbarian should be integrated into a bill desired by the executive as a broader text to promote housing for the middle classes and presented to the Council of Ministers in May, for examination at first reading in the Senate in June.

The text must also give more power to mayors in the allocation of social housing or in the decision to sell it, detailed Guillaume Kasbarian. The Minister for Housing also committed to maintaining “target objectives of 20 to 25% social housing” in the municipalities concerned by the SRU law (solidarity and urban renewal).

The government nevertheless wishes to integrate intermediate housing, with higher rents, into the tools offered to municipalities lacking in the number of social residences to make up for their return. “There will probably be (…) conditions that will be set”Mr. Kasbarian said Thursday during a press point in Bussy-Saint-Georges (Seine-et-Marne), adding that the government's objective was to“encourage builder mayors”, “no giving a blank check to those who do not want to build”.