Gabriel Attal wishes to include intermediate rental housing in the mandatory quota of social housing to be respected in each municipality. News that makes the sector jump.
The law relating to urban solidarity and renewal, known as the SRU, requires municipalities to have at least 25% social housing in their rental stock. It is on this principle that Gabriel Attal wishes to return, as he indicated in his general policy speech on Tuesday January 30. The Prime Minister now wants intermediate rental housing to be included in the calculation of this quota in the same way as social housing. A measure that he justifies by his political line of support for the middle classes.
The government targets the “upper” middle class
Attal’s announcement makes the associative community jump. “It’s a challenge, a way of unraveling the SRU law,” denounces Emmanuelle Cosse, president of the Social Union for Housing, in The world. “Intermediate rental housing does not have a social vocation, it is housing supported by the State, but to house the ‘upper’ middle class: there is no allocation commission, no control of the tenants’ resources after their entry into the accommodation, no obligation linked to solidarity”, she recalls.
A large part of the middle classes can in fact qualify for social housing. Intermediate housing therefore targets the wealthiest middle-class households, by offering regulated rents at below-market prices in tense areas.
2.6 million households waiting for social housing
“On the one hand, we have 2.6 million applicant households waiting for social housing. On the other, we have a construction dynamic which has never been so weak for 17 years,” points out Christophe Robert , general delegate of the Foundation Abbot Pierre, in Capital. “Gabriel Attal’s choice is clearly to support intermediate housing, with higher rents,” he concludes, recalling that “since 2017, the government has cut the budget of social landlords.”
For the association Droit au Logement, in Humanitythe Prime Minister, through his announcement, “opens Pandora’s box to gentrifying mayors and secessionists”.