Brittany: a residence status to access property?

On Trestrignel beach in Perros-Guirec (Côtes-d'Armor), magnificent pink granite villas overlook the expanse of golden sand.

Many have their shutters closed.

"It's really very pretty here", rave Armand and Martine, two retirees on vacation in the region.

The Norman couple would see themselves living there all year round.

We still have to find something to buy.

Goods are becoming increasingly scarce because the demand is very high.

"Our sales have increased by 30% in one year and prices by 10%", emphasizes Pascal, a real estate agent in the port of this seaside resort.

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A craze that is confirmed throughout the Breton coast.

Perros-Guirec now has between 40 and 50% of second homes.

In certain communes of Morbihan, this percentage soars up to 80%, as the “revolutionary” collective Dispac'h has underlined in recent years, by savagely tagging the figure in the communes concerned.

A large part of these dwellings are in fact only occupied part of the year.

“Do we want to be a park for wealthy tourists or a place to live?

This is the question posed by Nil Caouissin, professor of history and geography and member of the Breton Democratic Union (UDB), an autonomist party which has about fifty elected officials.

In a manifesto published in March by the Presses populaire de Bretagne editions, he pleads for the creation of a resident status in Brittany, only on the coast.

His idea: to give the right to purchase only to people who have lived in the region for a year.

A concept coming straight from Corsica, the hobbyhorse of the independence party Corsica Libera, but never adopted because it was deemed unconstitutional.

There was talk there of a five-year deadline.

"We are expecting half a million new arrivals in the coming years, we will have to house them, while avoiding the concreting of agricultural or natural land," insists Nil Caouissin.

He wants to be reassuring all the same: “We don't want to expropriate anyone and we have nothing against the Parisians.

"

"It still looks a bit like Breton nationalism"

Martine, the retired Norman, is dubious: "It probably starts from a good feeling but it still looks a bit like Breton nationalism".

For Pascal, the real estate agent, there is no question of restricting the freedom to buy.

“This proposal is very sectarian and directive,” he comments.

On the port, Franck, Sami and Olivier do not really know what to think of it, even if they embody the virtual impossibility for the local population to become owners.

None of these three municipal maintenance workers live on site.

"Too expensive", slips Olivier, whose salary capped at 1,300 euros.

The locals live more inland, like his colleague, Sami, who lives in Tréguier, half an hour away.

Alain, a retiree installed in Perros since 2013, brushes aside Nil Caouissin's proposal with the back of his hand, “quite simply because secondary residents bring money to the municipalities”.

While 80% of taxpayers are now exempt from housing tax, second homes continue to be subject to it.

"It is difficult to imagine that they wish to deprive themselves of this windfall", notes Alain.

The mayor of Perros-Guirec himself had decided in Ouest-France: “They are inhabitants like the others, especially with the two-residents of the Covid.

"