Vacant housing: a new law in preparation, with “carrot and stick” for owners

Excluded Capital

Excluded Capital. Lionel Causse, member of Ensemble pour la République, is working, with colleagues from other political parties, on a proposed law intended to combat real estate vacancy. A text that he intends to table at the end of January in the National Assembly.

• 
  

  To safeguard
  
  
  

  Saved
  

Lots of empty housing while France is not building enough to meet the needs of its population. It is in an attempt to put an end to this paradox that several deputies are preparing a bill intended to combat real estate vacancy. Lionel Causse, Ensemble pour la République deputy and former president of the National Housing Council, is “the pilot”he confides to Capital. But this text will be “transpartisan”assures the one who works on it with his colleagues Valérie Rossi (Socialists and related), Loïc Prud’homme (La France Insoumise-Nouveau Front Populaire) or even Marie-Charlotte Garin (Ecologist and social).

This bill will be structured around three main axes. First of all, “she will give a new legal definition of real estate vacancy»indicates Lionel Causse. Currently, the tax administration, which applies a tax on vacant housing, defines the latter as “unfurnished residential premises (apartments or houses) and vacant for at least one year as of January 1 of the tax year”.

Using carrots and sticks with owners

Then, the bill “must make it possible to havea better database on vacant housing and officesbetter mapping of these properties and an estimate of their potential (for transformation into occupied housing)”continues the MP. According to the 2023 report from the Abbé Pierre Foundation, around 8% of buildings in major French metropolises are vacant. A shame when we know that 300,000 people are homeless and that 15 million are faced with the housing crisis, living in over-occupied, unsanitary properties or very far from their place of work, deplores the Stop Gaspi Immo collective, which brings together around ten associations, such as Habitat et Humanisme, Plateau Urbain or Caracol.

The bill aims precisely to “to better identify these associations, on a legal level, in order to provide them with tools and means to transform vacant housing and offices into accommodation”for example for coliving, is developing Lionel Causse. Finally, the bill will bring “solutions to encourage owners of vacant housing and offices to make them available to these associations”underlines the parliamentarian. Among these solutions, still under study: “a carrot and a stick”smiles Lionel Causse. The carrot would consist, for example, of exempt from tax on vacant housing owners agreeing to collaborate with associations. The stick could take the form of a “obligation, for owners, to find a destination for their property after a certain duration of vacancy”imagines the deputy.

Landlords should not be afraid of this proposed law

“We will not touch vacant housing currently being sold or subject to inheritancethere is no question of putting owners who are looking for solutions to vacancy in difficulty.he promises. His colleague Stéphane Viry tabled a bill this fall intended to facilitate the expropriation of vacant housing in rural areas. “We will not go as far as expropriation”assures Lionel Causse. And the parliamentarian insisted: “owners should not be afraid” of this bill. A text that he hopes to submit to the National Assembly “end of January 2025”.