Evicting too-rich tenants from social housing, a controversial idea

The controversy arose from a declaration by the Minister for Housing, Guillaume Kasbarian, in an interview published Thursday in the newspaper Les Echos: "We must re-examine the relevance of continuing to occupy social housing for those who have largely exceeded the ceilings of income,” he suggested.

The minister made particular reference to those who, in the meantime, have received an inheritance, to the owners of a “secondary residence”, or to those whose “heritage” has “evolved”.

"When we have 5,2 million social housing units in France and 1,8 million households legitimately applying to enter it, is it normal that they are prevented from doing so when there are people within the social housing whose situation has changed significantly since they were allocated their housing?", he further questioned.

According to Les Echos, Guillaume Kasbarian affirmed that more than 8% of HLM tenants would no longer be eligible for social housing if they applied for one today.

“Ghetto” effect

This "notion of 'housing for life' (...) has no legal reality", tackled in a press release the Social Union for Habitat, the representative organization of the HLM sector, calling for "not to give in to demagoguery.

"The minister is right to recognize the reality of the queue for applications for social housing. But he is wrong to consider that it is by making tenants in social housing more insecure that we will compensate for the inadequacies of housing policy that we have been seeing since 2017," lamented former environmentalist minister Emmanuelle Cosse, who now heads this organization.

“Facilitating the expulsion of the middle classes from social housing accused of being 'too rich' is to organize the ghettoization of our HLMs,” judged the communist senator from Paris Ian Brossat.

In his eyes, this would amount to "moving from a +generalist+ model to a +residential+ model in which social housing is only reserved for the most vulnerable and completely excludes employees".

The proposal, he added in a press release, "is unspeakably hypocritical since it suggests that HLM tenants would today be ineligible for eviction."

As the regulations currently stand, tenants must respond annually to a “resources survey” to attest to their economic situation.

If they exceed a certain income ceiling, their landlord can increase their rent and if they report even higher income, they can in certain cases refuse to renew their lease.

Impending bill

The only protected categories are people aged over 65 and those with disabilities.

With these announcements, "in reality, the government is making social housing tenants pay for its inability to produce social housing", further denounced Ian Brossat.

Same story with the National Housing Confederation, which regretted on the social network X the “cynicism” of the proposal.

“Rather than producing social housing, (Guillaume) Kasbarian prefers to reduce the HLM stock and (...) pit the working classes against each other,” she denounced.

The government is preparing to present a bill aimed at promoting housing for the middle classes, which must be unveiled to the Council of Ministers in May, before an examination in the Senate scheduled for June.

The text must also give more power to mayors in the allocation of social housing or in the decision to sell it, detailed Guillaume Kasbarian on Thursday.

The strengthening of the study on social occupation of housing is also provided for in this bill. “Desirable”, recognizes the Social Union for Habitat. “But it is regrettable that nothing is planned to facilitate the production of social housing which houses the lower social class.”