The many voices that were raised, even in the presidential camp, against the reform of the Solidarity and Urban Renewal (SRU) law of 2000 were not enough. The bill on affordable housing, presented Friday May 3 in the Council of Ministers by Guillaume Kasbarian, the new Minister for Housing, will indeed relax this emblematic text, which obliges two thousand municipalities in urban areas to propose a rate minimum of 20% or 25% social housing, in order to promote social diversity.
Faced with the outcry triggered by this decision, Mr. Kasbarian, however, watered down his text and placed some safeguards. The principle certainly remains to allow cities which do not meet their SRU objective to integrate in the future intermediate rental housing, allocated to the upper middle classes, in their compulsory quota of social housing. However, this flexibility will only be granted to the 650 municipalities which already reach the threshold of 10% or 15% of social housing, and these will only be able to include a quarter of intermediate housing in the new construction objectives. But the final objective of 20% or 25% of purely social housing remains. This is about saving time for municipalities that are late, while reducing their financial penalties.
“Finally, this project integrates intermediate housing quite timidly. It’s mostly about touching the symbol”, estimates Philippe Laurent, UDI mayor of Sceaux, in Hauts-de-Seine. This is precisely what makes many elected officials and the social housing family bristle. “The pace of catching up for lagging municipalities has already been revised downwards for the period 2023-2025, via a law passed at the beginning of 2022. And by returning to parliamentarians, the government is paving the way for a large unraveling, if it is being outflanked by the right and the extreme right, as with the “immigration” law”, alerts Thierry Repentin, PS mayor of Chambéry, who chaired the SRU national commission until the end of 2023, responsible for ensuring its application. The National Housing Council (CNH), bringing together the many players in the housing world (professional associations, social landlords, elected officials, tenant associations, etc.), has mainly spoken out against the bill.
In the housing sector, one question never ceases to be asked: why choose to modify a law that mayors, apart from a few exceptions, ended up accepting year after year? The Association of Mayors of France took care to emphasize in a press release that it was not a requester. “We were all surprised, it wasn’t in the scope at all, and we never knew where the idea came from”, recognizes a Renaissance MP, who is well versed in housing issues. The Renaissance deputy for Landes, Lionel Causse, specifies that“none of the reports from the National Housing Council, which I chair, recommended it. This reform does not respond to the challenges, which would rather be to extend the SRU law to new territories where people no longer have the means to find housing.”
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