NOTWe, social landlords, local elected officials in popular cities, would like to express our concern about the current housing crisis, and about the discounted measures proposed by the government and the President of the Republic in recent months. The situation is more alarming than ever. Today, in Île-de-France, nearly 800,000 households are seeking social housing, 2.4 million in France.
Less than one in ten requests for social housing is satisfied each year. At the same time, rents are at their highest, and charges are increasing sharply. Accession and in particular social access to property are at a standstill, the number of loan agreements having plummeted given the economic context. The recent revolts that have taken place in our working-class neighborhoods also express a need for more decent housing and public services.
Here, it is the communities and HLM organizations that have their hands dirty and must manage a social crisis of unprecedented scale. Gathered during the HLM Congress, in Nantes, in October 2023, we were able to take stock of the announcements, in particular those of Patrice Vergriete, then minister responsible for housing, who confirmed the desire for decentralization of housing policy, without support our organizations. But, without significant financial resources, all the measures will not be up to the suffocation that social housing is experiencing in France.
The risk of reinforcing the specialization of social housing
Thus, the desire to decentralize housing policy is part of the continuity of the progressive disengagement of the State from social housing: strengthening of the solidarity rent reduction system (RLS), which places all the burden on landlords. charge of the reduction in personalized housing assistance (APL) leading to an automatic reduction in rents, approximate implementation of the law relating to solidarity and urban renewal (SRU) which does not prevent violations of the law of certain communities which consequently do not make their share of effort to build and house the working classes.
Announcing the decentralization of housing policy and blindly strengthening the power of mayors in the allocation of social housing amounts to completely shattering the cohesion and coherence of the most important public policy serving the population. Shared for years between town halls, intermunicipalities, social landlords, Action Logement, and state services, the allocation of HLM is a matter of overall consistency.
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