This is the first time that territorial professional real estate organizations have multiplied events throughout France with candidates for the municipal election next March. Large cities are those from which future city councilors are sought, not only because the unions have most often established their headquarters there, but above all because the difficulties of finding accommodation are more acute there than elsewhere.
However, more broadly, real estate professionals are aware that mayors play a determining role in housing and that local public policies are no less important than national policy. Thus, the FNAIM Chamber of Paris and Greater Paris will bring together on Thursday evening in its premises the 6 candidates for mayor of Paris to hear them on their program around major identified themes, and – a sign of the times – only one will not come in person, nevertheless represented by a renowned parliamentarian of his sensitivity and his list. Dignitaries from other organizations will be invited and this event will take on the appearance of a local event. An illustration among others, and a little more than that: never in the past would the candidates for mayor of the capital have accepted such an invitation without any failure to respond, and never would they have been so numerous in person. What is happening?
Increasing responsibility of mayors in terms of housing
The real estate community understands that mayors now have an absolutely major action for housing and even real estateand mayors have a growing awareness of this responsibility. They intend to exercise it. Undoubtedly, the future bill on decentralization, which the government has announced will be submitted to the desk of the Parliamentary Assemblies after the municipal elections so as not to disturb the debate, will propose the scenario of a strengthening of the power of mayors in matters of housing policy. Care must be taken to ensure that this text does not give rise to a state disengagementwhich remains at the end guarantor of housing for all French people, without breaking equality according to the territories. This is the limit point of an exercise which aims to create the conditions for proximity policymore pragmatic and adaptable to territorial identities.
How, in six years, has the situation of mayors evolved, and with it the way the industry views them? It was first of all regrettable circumstances which testified to their power, the decline in building permits and production. The essential power of mayors consists of allowing developers and builders of individual houses to build and increase the residential supply. However, between the green mayors newly elected in 2020, who clearly announced the color of the decline in the artificialization of land in anticipation of the oukases of the Climate Resilience law, and the others, cautious for a thousand reasons, fewer elected officials volunteered to issue building permits, which can also encourage the raising of existing buildings or houses. The question of compliance with social housing quotas under the SRU law is obviously at the heart of the problem and the deficient municipalities have not, for many of them, remedied their delay.
French people in favor of building mayors?
In short, during this election, we will work to elect or re-elect builder mayors and it seems moreover that we are preparing to give lie to the saying “Mayor builder, mayor beaten“. Opinion seems to find consistency in this regard and it attests to this by going so far as to wish for 41% of French people a reinstatement of the housing tax! Finally, she understands the link between the arrival of additional residents and the need to finance services and infrastructure to satisfy them… The trend increase in property tax will have helped her escape from the illusion in which President Macron wanted to plunge her by removing the tax upon his arrival at the Elysée…
These are other gestures that made professionals realize that they had to reckon with mayors. Rent control is already in their hands, but the State must still grant their request if it is formulated and argued and can reject it. It could be that the constraints are eased and that they are completely in control of the decision to constrain the level of residential rents. Establishing the rental license is also their prerogative. Major renovation operations, or even the restoration of co-ownerships in difficulty, fall within their remit. There too, these are dark events which may have opened the eyes of the inhabitants, in Marseille in particular: a town hall which does not act threatens the lives of its most fragile citizens. Mobility, traffic and parking choices, vital for residents, businesses and businesses, are part of the mayor’s powers. Creativity in terms of local taxation has increased, with drastic increases taxes, vacancy, land and other purposes.
Future major stakeholders for housing
Finally, it is in our communities that the consequences of poor housing are being observed, and it is the mayor who is expected to intervene urgently to save from the street those whom economic and social decline has thrown there: who would have the idea that the Minister of the City and Housing could act quickly enough for a woman or a man on a sidewalk?
From there to say that we are going to collectively elect on March 15 and 22 35,000 housing ministers, it’s not far. The center of gravity of housing policy has shifted to our municipalities. This is not a bad thing if we realize that our mayors will in the future be interlocutors not to be neglected. Learning to work with them and enlighten them now falls within the fundamental competence of intermediary bodies, hitherto obsessed with national politics.
