The senior administration, like the political world, seems to remain impassive in the face of the strong appeals of professional federations, which agitate the social cost of the housing crisis. “There is no longer a radish”, we claim in Bercy. Real estate is a “paradise for investors”, said Emmanuel Macron. It therefore seemed fairly obvious that real estate was going to be called upon to reduce public deficits. This was announced at the National Housing Reconstruction Council, to the dismay of stone professionals. This political choice, which seems assumed, is not illegitimate. But it is untenable without relieving the sector where it hurts. Standard. The one that weighs, the one that slows down, the one that costs. Like so many other areas of public life, but in an exacerbated way, real estate is undergoing a normative avalanche to the point of becoming an administered economy.
The spectators in the first row in the various advisory councils have their bags filled with anecdotes, each more incredible than the next. Like this decree setting the threshold of resources for applicants for social housing in the first quartile: it is their declarations, true or false, that are authentic, rather than their real income known by the tax authorities. The Equality and Citizenship Law of 2017 decided that a quarter of the allocations outside the districts in city policy (QPV) should benefit the 25% of the poorest households. It also demanded that half of the allocations in these same QPVs be made to households other than the lowest 25%. Since the law has said so, this text must be applied, even if it results in the non-achievement of its objective of diversity, because of this threshold which does not correspond to reality.
We could also cite this regional directorate of Cultural Affairs which searches 2 sites out of 3 because it considers the region to be the epicenter of Gallic culture. The method of calculating the energy performance diagnosis (DPE) which penalizes small surfaces quite simply because of the consumption of domestic hot water. The obligation in 2020 to install showers without a jump, called Italian, in new housing in the name of accessibility, and which adds 1 thousand euros per housing. Or even the qualification as an “establishment open to the public”, by the safety commission, of the house of this carer who welcomes six seniors, destroying his economic model. If the 4,000 standards in force in real estate contribute to improving the quality of housing, they contribute to soaring prices. Up to a quarter of the rise in the cost of construction is attributed to them over the past decade. It will come as no surprise when new housing will have become a luxury good, heavily subsidized, and access to which will resemble a great lottery for the working classes.
TH, ZAN, DPE, RE: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse
If overregulation is an insidious, everyday evil, it pales in comparison to recent political backlash. This techno-populism which adorns itself with ostentatious virtue, while giving itself the trappings of a measure considered and controlled by the Administration, will dynamite the stock of housing. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are magnificent acronyms, proof of their eminently technocratic character: TH, ZAN, DPE, RE. All are characterized by the absence or weakness of initial impact studies, as well as by trial and error in their implementation, a sign of culpable amateurism. Three of them have an environmental varnish which makes them attractive at first glance. They generate, in unison, negative expectations among housing stakeholders. And all of them, in their very design, fall under the “ratchet” measure, which makes it impossible to go back. Together, these four administrative creatures are going to result in a drop in the number of available homes, even as demand increases.
The abolition of the housing tax (TH) appeared as the perfect electoral gift within the framework of the presidential campaign of 2017. After all, it did not exist anywhere else. It was even to continue to be paid by a third of the wealthiest taxpayers. Alas, equality before the tax and the Constitutional Council have decided otherwise. Even if this abandonment was compensated for the communes which collected it, nobody had envisaged that this compensation would be considered as too lacking in dynamics by the mayors and that it would push them to refuse the construction of new housing as well as the reception of additional populations, with ad hoc needs for public services.
The ZAN, for “zero net artificialisation”, comes from the same short-sightedness. France is a relatively empty country. With 118 inhabitants per square kilometer, we are far from other large European countries, such as Italy (202 inhabitants), Germany (234) or the United Kingdom (270). And yet, this empty country has decided to implement the most restrictive land occupation regulations in the world, which requires reducing the rate of artificialization of natural spaces by 50% by 2030, before falling to zero by 2050. This objective, included in the Biodiversity plan of July 2018, was taken up by the citizens’ convention on the climate. It was based on the idea that a land surface equivalent to a department would be consumed every eight years if nothing was done. In reality, over the period 2006-2018, according to the European database Corine Land Cover, the rate of artificialization would rather be one department every twenty-one years. The application decrees were supposed to be revised, but, on the ground, under pressure from the prefects, the local urban plans now incorporate this constraint.
The energy performance diagnosis (EPD) is an old tool, created in 2006. After a first revision in 2013, it becomes binding on the seller and the lessor in July 2021, then binding in August 2022. A slow but normal progress for an instrument of this order. It is more its use that poses a problem. From 2025, dwellings with an energy label G will be considered indecent and prohibited for rental, Fs will follow in 2028 and Es in 2034. If half of the owners comply with the ban and the other half would incur costly renovation work, the housing stock would shrink by 50,000 units a year.
What to think, finally, of the RE2020 environmental regulation, so difficult to apply that its entry into force had been postponed for a year? It has already been exceeded: the energy performance threshold required in 2021 does not guarantee having a dwelling with an A label. However, to obtain the Pinel + tax advantage, a new dwelling must be marketed with this label. Developers therefore use the 2025 and 2028 thresholds in advance, which further increases the cost of construction.
A long-wicked social bomb
You only have to cross the Channel to see the effects of a social bomb like housing. France is 6.7 million more inhabitants since the year 2000, and 776 million residential square meters built. The United Kingdom is 8.2 million more inhabitants over the same period, and only 325 million additional square meters. The country is a veritable laboratory of the harmful consequences produced by too little construction: prohibitive cost for households, low quality of buildings, widening of inequalities in wealth… However, the situation has never exploded. Because, when housing is scarce, households do everything to avoid ending up on the street, and overcrowding prevails.
Are we so far away? INSEE assesses the degree of population of a dwelling by comparing the number of rooms it has with the number of rooms necessary for the household. One living room is required for the household, one room for each reference person and one room for two children if they are of the same sex or are under 7 years old, otherwise one room per child. With this definition, of the 12 million Ile-de-France residents, 2.7 million live in a situation of overcrowding.
No one ever measures housing intentions within households. However, we know that many situations are not desired, but well suffered: families in the process of divorce, young graduates in shared accommodation, students living with their parents… People want to live more and more alone. Wanting to answer these questions is to draw up a dizzying list of needs in square meters. What will happen when a million more homes are missing due to the regulations mentioned above? Rents, capped or not, will go up. Welcome to Paradise.
* Robin Rivaton is Managing Director of Stonal and member of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Political Innovation (Fondapol).