The deputy urban planner at Marseille City Hall resigned on Wednesday, a day after revelations that the poorest large city in France was under the threat of a deficiency procedure in the construction of social housing. "Following the events of recent days, I have decided to return my delegation to the mayor of Marseille," Mathilde Chaboche, who was in charge of urban planning and harmonious development of the city, said in a statement. Contacted by AFP, she was not immediately reachable to give more details of her decision.
The regional daily La Marseillaise had revealed Tuesday that the city, led by a union of the left elected in 2020 two years after the deadly tragedy of the substandard housing of the rue d'Aubagne, was under the threat of a procedure of deficiency in the construction of social housing, failing to achieve its objectives. Over the period 2020-2022, according to a prefectural assessment, the municipality has achieved only 38.2% of its target, which was the construction of 7,674 social rental housing units in a city where more than 40,000 applications for this type of housing are pending.
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If the prefect pronounces the deficiency, the city could be forced to pay fines or even be placed under state supervision for the issuance of building permits. For the main municipal opposition group, "A Will for Marseille", this resignation "sounds like a terrible collective failure for all elected officials of the Marseille Spring" and is "a new stage in the dislocation of this majority unable, according to these elected representatives of the center and the right, to preside over the affairs of the city".
The Marseille Spring, a broad coalition of left and ecologists, had succeeded in June 2020 the mayor LR Jean-Claude Gaudin, whose end of mandate had been particularly marked by the issue of poor housing, after the collapse of two dilapidated buildings in November 2018 which had killed eight people. During the general assembly of housing organized at the end of 2022 by the town hall, the municipality had mentioned the construction of some 4,500 housing units per year, including 2,300 "affordable" housing. In its electoral program, the Marseille Spring promised the construction of 30,000 housing units in six years, or 5,000 per year, "adapted to the incomes of the Marseillais".