A digital subscription for less than 2 euros per month, quality food products at the lowest price, grouped orders for electricity to reduce charges… Three good initiatives taken by one or other of the City's three social landlords of Paris which will be generalized to the entire municipal HLM park.
The central town hall, Paris Habitat, the RIVP and Elogie-Siemp, have decided to join forces and their ideas to help the tenants of the social housing to overcome the crisis.
"The crisis we are going through affects the main economic sectors of our city - tourism, culture, hotels - restaurants and services - and weakens young people, single mothers, who were already in the breach, but also, and this is new, middle-class families who fear they will no longer be able to make ends meet, explains Ian Brossat, Housing Assistant (PCF).
Our objective is to improve their purchasing power through economies of scale in their main expenditure items.
This “purchasing power pack” concerns energy expenditure, the digital bill, the food budget, precarious families and young people.
120 euros savings on energy costs
These represent around 35% of rental charges and have increased with confinement and teleworking.
“Our ambition is to reduce the energy bill of families in the social housing stock by 15% per year by playing on purchasing volumes,” explains Ian Brossat.
Within two years, the energy contracts for collective consumption will be replaced by a group purchase between donors, which should make it possible to "lower rental charges by 120 euros per year per household".
An Internet subscription for less than two euros
Digital spending is not negligible either, especially for large, single-parent families with student children.
To reduce this bill, all tenants of the social housing of the city of Paris will have access to a triple-play offer (Internet, TV, fixed telephony) at 1.53 euros per month.
“We have been offering it for 10 years with SFR.
Almost 20,000 tenants, or 1 in 6, have subscribed to this unbeatable offer.
It allows people who do not have the means to pay for a classic subscription to send emails or to consult public service sites for example and to have access to TNT channels and to a fixed telephone line ” , indicates the general manager of Paris Habitat, Stéphane Dauphin.
It will be generalized to the two other donors of the City of Paris, which will launch the calls for tenders this summer.
Group purchases of fruits and vegetables
After housing, food is the other expenditure item that weighs the most on the budget of tenants.
To allow “eating better and cheaper”, the City and donors will increase the number of premises in priority neighborhoods managed by the VRAC association (Vers un Réseau d'Achats en Commun), which set up in Paris in 2018 after to have started in Lyon.
Thanks to group purchases, consumers can, for a subscription of 1 euro, get supplies of local products.
Local fruits and vegetables from peasant, organic, fair-trade agriculture as well as hygiene and maintenance products are offered at low prices thanks to a policy of reducing intermediaries and packaging.
Orders are placed on the Internet and are collected from premises at the foot of buildings made available to the association by social landlords.
"I was a teacher, I know from having seen it, that we do not succeed in the same way at school if in the morning or in the evening, at home, we do not eat as we would like, reminds us the deputy.
This is why, by the end of the year, we will be opening four new sites that will allow 3,000 additional tenants to access BULK.
»These openings planned in the districts of Porte de Vanves (14th century), Porte d'Aubervilliers (19th century), Porte de Bagnolet and Amandiers (20th century) will bring the number of points managed by the association to ten. subsidized by the city (30,000 euros per year) and social landlords.
No evictions for bona fide tenants
As in 2020, the Paris city hall promises to prevent rental evictions.
“There will be no homelessness for bona fide tenants affected by the crisis.
On the other hand, we will strengthen the measures to help tenants in difficulty, such as social support and the spreading of rents for families in difficulty, ”assures Ian Brossat, excluding from the outset the troublemakers of enjoyment or those who practice trafficking of all kinds, in particular narcotics.
According to the town hall of Paris, "unpaid rent has increased slightly overall".
More than 37,000 tenants in the City's social housing are late in paying.
The town hall also wants to increase the budget of the Solidarity Rent Fund by 5 million euros to bring it to 16 million in 2021 in order to help low-income families and young people in precariousness pay their rent.
This aid will be extended to residents of temporary housing (hostels for young workers and social residences).
