Ceiling height of 1.80 m, finished basement considered as accommodation, absence of mandatory window with opening: the High Committee for the Right to Housing (HCDL) is calling this Friday for the complete revision of a decree accused of be an open door to slumlords.
A week after the vote in the Senate on the bill on “degraded housing”, which concerns between 400,000 and 600,000 housing units in France, the HCDL, an independent body created at the initiative of Abbé Pierre and attached to the Prime Minister, requests the revision of the decree of July 29, 2023 on the health rules of hygiene and sanitation of residential premises.
Left-wing deputies and senators had failed to have this decree revised during the debates in parliament on the text “Unworthy housing”.
“The precise definition of unworthy or unsanitary housing enshrined in the law allows the intervention of administrative authorities, in a preventive or curative manner,” recalls the HCDL in its opinion.
However, the housing crisis today forces “thousands of households to take refuge in sub-markets of poverty: shanty towns, squats” and “allows slumlords to proliferate”.
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To harmonize at the national level the health rules for hygiene and sanitation of housing, until now defined at the departmental level, the government launched in 2020 a simplification of building policies.
It is within this framework that the decree was adopted.
The reform had the objective of harmonizing the rules "from above", note the authors, but this objective is not fulfilled according to them, with different rules which persist depending on the territories, while the decree also results in "a regression of the applicable law in terms of health rules that weaken people who are victims of unsanitary housing.”
Height, basements, ventilation and natural light
This is the case with the ceiling height, which can be 1.80 m today, compared to 2.20 m previously, provided that the habitable volume is 20 m3.
“The absence of space in housing contributes to the development of anxiety and depressive pathologies,” recalls the HCDL.
In addition, while basements are historically considered unsuitable for habitation, the text “adds an exemption concerning basements which do not present a risk to the health of the occupants,” note the authors.
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The new decree also does not require “permanent, natural or mechanical ventilation of the dwelling”.
However, “the absence of the obligation to have a window with an opening in each living room opening onto the outside is essential to ensure natural ventilation,” underlines the High Committee.
On natural light, the authors finally ask that “all main rooms serving as living room or bedroom have natural lighting with the obligation of a sufficiently clear horizontal view”.