The winter break officially ended this Sunday, March 31. 140,000 people are threatened with eviction as of this Sunday, in a context of a housing crisis which is getting worse day by day.
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According to the Abbé Pierre foundation, a third of those expelled have still not found a home three years after their expulsion and are still staying in a hotel or with a relative. The high cost of rent, combined with the small number of housing available for rental, plunges theFrance for almost 20 years in a housing crisis that does not seem to be going away. Since the start of the 2000s, real estate prices have jumped 170% but personal salaries have not increased as quickly.
The amount of personal housing assistance (APL) making it possible to fill this gap has only decreased since 2017. The start of the five-year term ofEmmanuel Macron was marked by a general cut of 5 euros per month for all beneficiaries. Other measures, such as the “contemporaneization” of aid, have further reduced the amount of this public aid. Thus, since 2021, four billion euros in savings have been made by the State on the APL envelope.
A historic housing crisis
Currently, around 2.6 million people are currently waiting for HLM housing. But here again, supply and demand do not evolve at the same speed. The growth of social housing has slowed down over the last twenty years.
Paradoxically, 3.1 million homes are currently vacant in France, or 1 in 12 homes. There have never been so many. For the economist Pierre Concialdi, a specialist in poor housing, the development of furnished tourist accommodation, Airbnb type accommodation, is no stranger to this. “ In the most tense areas (such as Île-de-France), rental supply is strongly constrained by these phenomena. There is also a considerable rise in property prices. In this context, it may be interesting for an owner to keep his accommodation while waiting for the best time to realize his added value, and so as not to be forced, by tenants, to leave his accommodation unoccupied. “, he explains.
The Kasbarian-Bergé law is unfavorable for tenants in precarious situations
The associations grouped on the platform Housing for all also accuse the State of wanting to criminalize poor housing and poverty. In 2023, the vote of the Kasbarian-Bergé law supported by deputies Aurore Bergé and Guillaume Kasbarian, (the latter is now Minister for Housing) added fuel to the fire.
It aimed to protect owners from the illegal occupation of their property, to the detriment of tenants. With this law, eviction procedures have been accelerated. If the tenant still remains in the premises, he will be punished with a fine of 7,500 euros. If he finds refuge in an uninhabited building such as empty offices, places considered to be squats: he faces up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine.
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