The Foundation for Housing the Disadvantaged has just released its 31st report on poor housing and all the indicators are red. The situation of vulnerable people has further deteriorated in terms of housing and the figures are terrible: a million people do not have their own homeand among them 350,000 live in conditions of advanced precariousness; 600,000 of our compatriots also live with third parties out of obligation, unable to afford to rent accommodation. The number of HLM applicants is approaching 3 millionof which a third already in the social park but whose housing is no longer suited to their situation, whether their family structure has changed or the location of their employment is no longer the same. The number of rental evictions has increased significantly.
How could a nation like ours cope with this cancer? However, it does not do so and public decision-makers are not indifferent to it… The fact remains that the facts are stubborn and that the policy pursued is not commensurate with the problem. We will also regret that the revelations about Abbé Pierre and the change of name of the eponymous Foundation have for the moment weakened the voice of this organization which is disturbing and speaks the truth.
Insufficiency of housing policy for all
President Macron taking office had promised the pure and simple eradication of homelessness and it must be recognized that the Housing First plan has borne fruit, leading to a real increase in emergency accommodation places today. more than 200,000. Except that the needs have themselves increased, linked to harsher economic and social circumstances, while this offer has stagnated since 2021, as all budgetary resources have declined and all the difficulties linked to the production of the traditional offer have increased. We like to believe that the future Head of State will make the same commitment to the country and keep it.
Except that this result passes through two conditions, which we do not always identify. Certainly, the treatment of the most deprived falls within a specific compartment of housing policy, with the need for budgetary resources. This action also requires the mobilization of private initiative, most often led by foundations or associations for achievements combining public funds, collective generosity and private know-how: thus, the relay houses must multiply in our cities, with the help of major players such as Habitat et Humanisme or the Foundation for housing the disadvantaged. However, poor housing has its origins in the inadequacy of the housing policy for all, if we can call it that.
France facing the challenge of accessible housing
Indeed, there is only one step between residential normality and exclusion. Decline is rapid and threatens the strongest. A life accident, a separation, a death, a disabling illness, burnout, depression, loss of job or simply a forced part-time shift. Faced with these situations, the need for cheaper, more affordable housing, if it cannot be satisfied, leads to the worst.
People who are hosted by a third party, who may be a member of their family, benefit from solidarity, but their living conditions are most often unacceptable and they unwillingly alter those of their hosts. This is the case for young people who are unable to find housing at a cost they can afford and do not move away from their parents, further compromising their study plans in another city. How many also miss a work opportunity because they cannot afford the rent where employment is offered to them.
France is struggling to meet the challenge of accessible housing, whether we are talking about HLM production (85,000 more homes per year, when 120,000 are needed), or intermediate rental, we are waiting for the effect of the Jeanbrun system, knowing that investments in new construction have dropped by around 40,000 units per year and 60,000 in the old.
A worrying crisis
In short, it is firstly the inadequacy of housing policy in recent years, which the
the most recent happy decisions will not erase in a few months, which explains the extent of the
poor housing: the report from the former Abbé Pierre Foundation, which is already a mine of qualitative and quantitative information, should tell us the proportion of poorly housed or homeless people who a year, two years or five years earlier, were “normal” people.
To reassure themselves, both public opinion and decision-makers imagine that the housing poor are not their own people. That there is no porosity between poor housing and difficulties in finding accommodation for households that are in the game, with an honorable economic and social status. Our housing policy, by not ensuring the vigor of investment, by not facilitating enough first time purchase -which reduces demand for rentals-, considering that everything was going well for the majority of French people, has damaged the situation of thousands of households, excluded from the market and forced to request non-market housing arrangements.
In itself, what is commonly called the housing crisis is worrying. The worst is elsewhere: in the public unconsciousness thatmarket astheniafrom construction to rentals and sales, pushes thousands of households each year into residential emptiness and very few can consider themselves safe from homelessness. Future mayors, the next tenant of the Élysée, the parliament renewed at the same time as him, we expect them to understand that those excluded from housing are the living critics, when they still are, ofa failing policy for all.
Never again.
