UA single-parent family is twice as exposed to discrimination when looking for housing than a two-parent family, according to an investigation by the Defender of Rights. Single parenthood is a gendered issue, which affects 83.2% of mothers.
Today, 24.7% of French families are single-parent families, according to INSEE. Moreover, 40.5% of them live below the poverty line. Are these single mothers and their children condemned to insecurity?
Access to property is a challenge for these single-parent households. Consequently, 37% of single-parent families are tenants of social housing (compared to 15.8% of traditional families); 24% of them are affected by poor housing. These families are over-represented in priority areas of city policy, as well as in emergency accommodation. Is emergency accommodation a solution?
An exponential reality
Emergency services are saturated. There are, for example, in Seine-Saint-Denis, only ten mother-child reception establishments out of one hundred and sixty-eight across France. The means of social support provided are largely insufficient in view of the ever-increasing, invisible and minoritized problems associated with single parenthood.
Single parenthood is an exponential reality that is rarely taken into account by current city policies. In addition, the logic of gentrification in certain peri-urban areas goes against the new policies of the National Agency for Urban Renewal (ANRU) which require a quota of 25% for social housing. The State has also authorized an increase in rents of up to 3.5%.
The increase in the cost of energy, quantified, according to a report from the Institute of Economic and Social Research (“Eclairages”, Ires, November 2022), at 41.9% from 2014 to 2022, caused the cost of housing expenses to explode. To this must be added a 17.7% increase in insurance costs and a 14% increase in building costs.
Situations of over-indebtedness
This study which compares the Onpes figures [Observatoire national de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale devenu en 2021 le comité scientifique du Conseil national de lutte contre les exclusions] established in 2014 and those of 2022 pose inflation as being the core of a number of problems encountered by the French who are no longer able to find decent housing. Single-parent families are very heavily impacted.
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