The “social bomb” of housing has exploded due to the “scale and seriousness” of the crisis in 2023, warns the Abbé Pierre Foundation on Wednesday in its annual report, 70 years after its founder’s call for solidarity towards the homeless.
“The year 2023 will remain that of the alarming worsening of the housing crisis, and in the face of this the government continues a policy of austerity, which for us is a fundamental error”, summarized during a press conference Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé Pierre Foundation (FAP).
“I call on everyone to refuse the unacceptable,” he also said on Wednesday on the Quotidien show.
🔴 “I call on everyone to refuse the unacceptable!
” @chrstphe_robert #REML2024#Quotidien pic.twitter.com/2ku8d2btjE
— FondationAbbéPierre (@Abbe_Pierre) January 31, 2024
This grim observation first affects the most vulnerable, namely the 330,000 homeless people, who have more than doubled in ten years, but also the 4.2 million poorly housed people.
Every evening in the fall, more than 8,300 people were turned away in France by the 115 for lack of emergency accommodation places, including 2,800 minors, compared to 6,300 in 2022, despite the increase in the number of places.
If access to emergency accommodation has become congested in a few years, including outside the winter period, it is in particular because access to social housing “has experienced a sudden drop”, notes the report.
A total of 2.6 million households are waiting for social housing, but people living on less than 500 euros per month have paradoxically seen their success rate decrease from 22% to 12% between 2017 and 2022.
A crisis that grips all sectors of activity
If this housing crisis is “unprecedented”, according to the Foundation, it is because it now affects everyone, including prospective buyers who are no longer able to borrow due to the meteoric rise in mortgage rates. interest since 2022. It grips “with incredible force and speed” all sectors of activity at the same time: construction, sales and rentals, social housing.
“We see employees blocked in their mobility, businesses struggling to recruit, households facing a shrinking private rental offer under pressure from tourist rentals and second homes, young people giving up their studies for lack of accommodation, social housing applicants who are increasingly in competition,” lists Christophe Robert.
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Faced with this observation, the Foundation regrets “the lack of real response from the government” or proposals “which do not address the causes of the crisis”.
This she explains by a “diagnosis dispute” between those on the ground and the State, the latter anticipating a drop in demographic growth or overestimating the capacities of the housing stock.
A corollary of this crisis, “unworthy” housing, where housing harms health, safety or human dignity, weighs more than ever on the daily lives of the most modest.
This little visible “slum” France, which subjects “more than a million people” to “very difficult” living conditions, remains the “poor relation of public action”, underlines the Foundation, recognizing that the project law adopted last week on the subject “goes in the right direction”.
“Unworthy housing is not simply obsolescence, age, technical problems in housing”, but “it is the meeting between deterioration in buildings and the path of households in difficulty”, analyzes Manuel Domergue, director of studies of the FAP, recalling that the poorly housed are ready to “accept anything rather than the street”.
The forgotten “very social housing”
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, promised a “supply shock” to respond to the crisis, which should notably translate into support for intermediate housing, with rents slightly below the market, to help the middle classes.
But for the FAP, this means forgetting “three quarters of social housing applicants”, who expect “very social housing”.
“A very bad blow to the law,” comments Christophe Robert on the social network X.
We went from 125,000 social housing workers in 2017 to 82,000 in 2023. The housing sector is reaching new heights (2.6M households).
Nearly 2/3 of cities do not respect the Sru law.
But the Prime Minister wants to integrate the intermediate light officers into the Sru.
In short, a very bad blow to the law
— Christophe Robert (@chrstphe_robert) January 30, 2024
Recalling that housing “contributes 88.3 billion euros to tax revenue” for “38.2 billion in expenses”, the FAP calls for increasing the public effort for housing, which “has never been as low” since 2010.
She proposes making the fight against homelessness a national priority, relaunching funding for social housing, generalizing rent control, upgrading personalized housing assistance (APL) and does not hesitate to quote Abbé Pierre , for whom “governing is first and foremost housing your people”.