Housing crisis: the government wants to reclassify 800 municipalities into “tense zones”

This reclassification should allow municipalities to have "access to systems to produce more affordable housing, for rental or for ownership", wrote in a joint press release the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire and the delegate to the Housing Guillaume Kasbarian.

“These tools will be opened after a consultation with local elected officials” which must be launched by the end of May, “confirming the tension on the housing market”, continued the government. The list of reclassified municipalities must be made public in June.

Potentially, "the 3,5 million French people living in these municipalities will be able to benefit either from new systems to access housing, or from improvements to existing systems", indicated these ministries.

In particular, 1,8 million additional people “could (…) be made eligible for the zero-interest loan to acquire new housing,” the same source said.

Another system concerned: intermediate rental housing, whose rents are 10 to 15% below market prices thanks to public aid and which can only be produced in tight areas.

The government had already indicated on Wednesday that it wanted to double the rate of production of these intermediate housing units, bringing it to 30.000 per year by 2026.

Since Emmanuel Macron came to power, the executive has strongly pushed for intermediate rental housing (LLI), intended primarily for the middle classes and private sector employees who have difficulty finding accommodation in large cities but earn too much to benefit from social housing.

A first change in tension zoning took place in October 2023, the government recalled on Friday: it led to the reclassification of 200 municipalities.