Marseille intends to make housing one of its priority projects.
The Minister Delegate for Housing, Olivier Klein, gave the green light on Tuesday to a rent control in the second city of France, a measure strongly desired by the left-wing municipality to fight against housing difficulties.
"I received the file last Thursday" and "I want to say here my agreement that we can regulate rents in Marseille", declared the minister at the end of the first estates general of housing, assuring that this request will be " a priority” of his administration.
Rents are already regulated in Paris and in 18 municipalities of Seine-Saint-Denis as well as in Lille, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Lyon and Villeurbanne.
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The Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis led by Martine Vassal (Les Républicains) has submitted a file which provides for supervision only in Marseille, and not in the 91 other municipalities of the community, some of which, like Cassis, are popular seaside resorts.
Here she responds favorably to a repeated request from the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan.
The metropolis, she fears that such a measure "will come to seize up the system even more" and in particular construction while Marseille has 40,000 slums and as many requests for social housing pending.
Several deadly tragedies of unsanitary housing
With these Estates General, the left-wing municipality showed that after schools, it wanted to carry the housing project which is not its direct competence, after several fatal tragedies of unsanitary housing.
In 2018, two dilapidated buildings collapsed on rue d'Aubagne, in the city center, killing eight people.
Even more recently, in 2021, a fire in a degraded and squatted city, the Flamingos, killed three people.
It is “a moment of changeover in the mandate”, estimated the deputy mayor Patrick Amico.
“We are ready for a reinforced and unprecedented cooperation between our two institutions”, added the vice-president of the metropolis for Housing, David Ytier.
About thirty proposals thus emerged from these two days of consultation.
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Among them, the "rental permit" - a device which makes it possible to check that the accommodation is up to standard - for the moment tested around Rue d'Aubagne, could be extended to other central districts.
However, the cornerstone of this subject is still missing, the Local Housing Plan (PLH) 2023-2028 – a crucial tool for establishing the housing strategy in a territory – which the metropolis promises to detail at the start of 2023.
A priori, communities would commit to an annual rate of construction of 11,000 housing units, of which approximately 40% in Marseille.
A territorial rebalancing is also necessary in this territory notoriously known for its shortcomings in terms of social housing.
