IThere are criminals in France who take advantage of poverty to make money from it. We will never have words strong enough to describe slumlords. Men who shamelessly take advantage of poverty to rent indecent and dilapidated housing at high prices, who make trafficking in unworthy housing a lucrative business, who sacrifice lives without any scruple. Their voracity and their actions are a scourge and a danger for our cities and their inhabitants.
In Marseille, we made a promise: to act tirelessly to identify, track down and punish these sellers of misery. We have increased our actions. Since our arrival, we have systematically reported to the public prosecutor the actions of malicious landlords who refuse to carry out work, who continue to demand rent on accommodation subject to orders of danger, unsanitary conditions or prohibition of use. live.
We support associations which act every day to identify situations of substandard housing and fight alongside the victims. We file a civil suit to always stand on the side of those who suffer, and stand alongside the prosecution when investigations are opened.
Too often unpunished
But we must go further. Today, the offense of slumlord does not exist in the law. We must reverse the course of things, and quickly. While thousands of people in Marseille, and throughout France, are prisoners of these crooks, prisoners of their influence, they still too often go unpunished.
Unpunished because their victims are trapped. Unpunished because the means to prosecute them, to investigate and to convict them are still too weak. Unpunished because the law does not clearly define what a slumlord is.
Today, the central notion of the texts in force is only based on the characterized abuse of the weakness or dependence of the tenant by his lessor, and not on the marketing of indecent housing. Let us remember, however, that the possibility for everyone to have decent housing is an objective with constitutional value (Constitutional Council, decisions of January 19, 1995, No. 94-359 DCand of July 29, 1998, No. 98-403 DC).
The formal definition of the notion of slumlord could help protect access to dignified and decent housing more effectively if it focused on this right. We must develop the texts to equip ourselves with a legal arsenal that meets the challenge that the right to dignity imposes on us.
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