Cut 60,000 surface parking spaces and transfer them to underground parking lots and make room for the bicycle? The project, announced Tuesday by the mayor (PS) of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, in the middle of the campaign for the municipal elections, could well play the game… of social landlords. They have 76,000 parking spaces in Paris, or 16% of parking in housing, according to a recent study by the Parisian Urban Planning Workshop (Apur), of which several thousand are vacant.
"This is a problem that we have been facing for ten years," explains Tristan d'Inguimbert, customer manager at CDC Habitat. The abolition of the obligation to rent a parking space with an apartment, the reduction in the use of the car (- 20% since 1999 in Paris), the construction of more parking spaces than accommodation, when households still had two cars, and the obligation to build parking lots during the construction of buildings did nothing to improve the situation.
"Of our 800 parking spaces in Paris, we have 350 that cannot find takers and we have real difficulties in renting them, despite the multiplication of commercial announcements," explains Eddy Bordereau, director of heritage for Polylogis group. 20 to 30% of the spaces in these underground car parks would not be used today. These vacant places are all missed financial opportunities.
Complicated live management
A potential that has not escaped Paris Habitat, which alone has 49,000 parking spaces in the capital - more than 10% of the parking supply in the housing stock in Paris. “The rental of our places, to our tenants but also to those who live next door, is important for our revenue, explains Stéphane Dauphin, its general manager. We have set up dedicated teams and the means to rent these places. »Result? A vacancy rate of 12%.
But not everything is always so "simple". "It worked a little, but not in the expected proportions," says Tristan d'Inguimbert. And the CDC Habitat customer manager explained: “We were unable to market them. Our job is housing, not parking lots. "We have conventional rental contracts, we lack flexibility," admits a lessor. "They know how to rent accommodation, but not parking spaces," says Thibaut Chary, co-founder of Yespark. "Try it, you will see," he tempted us.
So we tried. Paris-Habitat offers a map of its car parks on its website where spaces are available for rent. On each car park, a sticker displays a telephone number to contact to rent a place. After three calls, for three car parks, we had no response. "Sorry, your recipient cannot be reached", whispers our phone to us. Another phone call: "Wait, you will be put in contact with your interlocutor ..." We are still waiting.
We are trying via the parking-paris.com site, which brings together the offer of several donors throughout the capital. Again, it happens over the phone. First try, four rings and a message: “Sorry, your correspondent's answering machine contains too many messages. ”Second try, no response, but an SMS a few seconds later:“ For an outside meeting, please leave a message ”.
Startups to the aid of donors
So startups, like Yespark, rushed into the breach. "We will see the lessors who make their vacant places available to us and then charge us to rent them," explains Thibaut Chary. Its box, created in 2014, has the technology in its favor: in a few clicks on its smartphone, it is possible to rent a place and access it in the second, thanks to its phone which acts as a remote control. Thanks to its solution, Yespark paid in 2019 4.6 million euros to 72 donors in Ile-de-France, "which made it possible to do work in some residences perhaps earlier than they would have been done ".
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If Yespark has chosen long-term rental - "the only way in which you can fill up and make a profit", in the eyes of Thibaut Chary - others are betting more on the short term. This is the case of Zen Park or One Park which, in addition to offering a monthly subscription, offers parking by the hour. "We realized that there was a lot of tension in the parking lot, while at the same time there are a lot of empty spaces", explains Younes El Garti of One Park, for whom 20% of its 24,000 Ile-de-France places are with social landlords.
A good expert on the subject summed up the situation: “For a very long time, parking was not the priority of donors and they made no effort on it. But they are under such financial pressure that they are now paying attention. "Tristan d'Inguimbert, CDC Habitat, admits:" Renting our places to third parties pushes us to take an interest in them otherwise, to finance work that we would not have done and to transform it as something that has an interest, when yesterday it was just an accessory to housing. "