After several hiccups, the municipal council of Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) voted Wednesday in favor of an exceptional subsidy making it possible to exempt the rents for 4.000 tenants of its HLM park, promised by the city in full crisis of coronavirus, subject to legality control by the prefecture.
Read also: The HLM office in Bobigny votes to cancel the rents, despite the advice of the prefecture
The amount of the subsidy amounts to 800,000 euros out of the 1.6 million of the cost of the operation. The funds to finance this operation come "from the reserves of the works which were not carried out and not from a loan" , assured the 1st assistant UDI Christian Bartholmé, candidate of the majority, arrived second in the first round of the municipal behind the Communist candidate, during the municipal council broadcast live. The public housing office (OPH) of Bobigny assumes the remaining expenses after the vote on May 20 of its board of directors. The exemption from rents for the month of April "will take the form of a reimbursement of the amounts paid by the tenants" , indicates the town hall of Bobigny. The municipality specifies that this measure"May only be implemented subject to the legality check carried out by the Prefect (...)" . Requested by AFP, the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture was not reachable.
Imbroglio
The decision to exempt rents for the 4,000 tenants of the OPH by the municipality UDI was the subject of an imbroglio. On April 23, the city of Bobigny agreed to cancel all of the April rents for the 4,000 tenants of its DPO. A measure dictated by the desire to "privilege the purchasing power of families" , affected, according to the city, by the economic consequences due to confinement.
But a few days later, the president of the office, Jonathan Berrebi, had sent a letter to the tenants explaining that "precarious financial balances (...) as well as the lack of legal bases, do not allow exemption rents ” .