Like a déjà vu effect. To try to resolve the housing crisis, Gabriel Attal promised, in front of deputies, during his general policy speech on Tuesday January 30, a “supply shock”. A proposal already launched by Emmanuel Macron in 2018, at the time of the Elan law, which aimed to lower real estate prices to allow everyone to access housing.
“If there is one sector that needs to be unlocked, it is housing,” acknowledged the Prime Minister before the National Assembly, adding: “The problem is clear, it is due to both supply and on demand.” He then listed several key measures, “immediate solutions”, which he intends to carry out in concert with local elected officials to revive the sector.
Simplify standards
Firstly, the Prime Minister announced the government’s pressing desire to “simplify standards”. “We are going to massively simplify the standards: review the DPE [diagnostics de performance énergétique], simplify access to MaPrimeRénov’, facilitate densification, lift constraints on zoning, speed up procedures”, he declared. A proposal which is in line with Emmanuel Macron, who advocated exactly the same thing a week before. “We must reduce delays, we must constrain procedures. We must avoid multiple appeals and at all levels,” he insisted during his big back-to-school press conference.
As an extension of this simplification, the government intends to draw inspiration from the accelerated procedures put in place on the sites of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. “We will designate, in two weeks, 20 territories committed to housing where we will accelerate all the procedures as we we knew how to do it for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” said Gabriel Attal. With the aim of creating at least 30,000 new homes there within three years.
Revise the SRU law on social housing quotas
The Prime Minister also intends to “develop” the social housing sector to “support the middle classes”. To do this, he said he would like to review the count of social housing under the law relating to solidarity and urban renewal (SRU). Adopted in 2000, this emblematic law of urban policy requires municipalities with more than 3,500 inhabitants, located in urban areas, to have a minimum rate of social housing (25% by 2025). “As you know, by 2025, all municipalities subject to the SRU law must have at least a quarter of social housing on their territory. We will propose to add, in part, intermediate housing, accessible to the middle class, in this calculation,” said the Prime Minister.
In other words, it is a question of allowing a segment of the middle class to access social housing with higher rents, called “intermediate”, by revising the SRU law. On this subject, criticism was quick. “It is scandalous to include in the quotas of the SRU law intermediate rental housing which is intended rather for the middle classes, or even the upper middle classes,” reacted to AFP Manuel Domergue, director of studies at the Foundation Abbé Pierre, recalling that “three quarters of applicants for social housing [soit 2,6 millions de ménages] waits[aient] very social housing.
This measure would, in fact, lower the housing construction objectives for the most modest. “Conflating intermediate housing and social housing is a step backwards and above all not a solution,” said Renaud Payre, vice-president, committed to the left, of the metropolis of Lyon, in the columns of the newspaper The echoes.
Support for social landlords and requisitions
Another promise from Gabriel Attal: support for social landlords. The head of government thus supported the maintenance, since this summer, at 3% of the remuneration rate of the Livret A, which serves as the basis for loans granted to HLM organizations, as well as the fund of 1.2 billion euros over three years created to help with the energy renovation of social housing, or even subsidized loans from the Caisse des Dépôts. “We will also contribute to changing the world of social housing to encourage elected officials to develop new programs, he added. We will join hands with mayors for the first allocation in new social housing built in their municipality : it was a measure expected by local elected officials.”
Currently, these attributions are decided by commissions bringing together representatives of the lessor, the mayor, the State and the intermunicipality. The Association of Mayors of France (AMF) welcomed in a press release “the recognition of the competence of mayors in the allocation of social rental housing”. A measure which makes certain actors fear the return of clientelism in the allocation of social housing.
Still aiming to facilitate access to housing, Gabriel Attal also announced that he wanted to “carry out requisitions for empty buildings”, particularly offices. “We have already done it and we will continue,” he said. An announcement taken very seriously by the communist senator Ian Brossat, who invited him to support his group’s proposed law “relating to the evolution of the law of requisition in tense zones”.