The lack of social housing is fuelling substandard housing in Île-de-France, according to the Court of Auditors

The regional branch of the Court of Auditors notes that the "number of applicants from the Paris region has doubled since 2010, housing is no longer becoming available" and thus "in ten years, social housing has become an anchor housing stock".

The Île-de-France region had 1,4 million social housing units as of January 1, 2024, or a quarter of the national social housing stock, but only managed to satisfy one in ten requests, compared to one in four in France, and left 840.000 requests pending, according to the report.

The regional chamber warns that this "structural crisis is fuelling the scourge of substandard housing, known as 'de facto' social housing, which is being turned to by the poorest households who are unable to find a solution in the regulated social housing sector".

The number of applications for social housing has doubled since 2010 and a third of applications come from residents of social housing.

To improve mobility, the regional audit office recommends "encouraging households to exchange a home that has become too big for a smaller one with financial compensation, a guarantee of no rent increase, and payment of moving costs subject to resource conditions", in order to avoid under-occupancy.

The institution also notes that the rent supplement applied to households whose income exceeds the fixed ceiling "does not produce the desired effects in re-letting the accommodation".

As for new construction, it is very far from the public authorities' objective of creating 37.000 social housing units per year: only 18.499 approvals issued in 2023 and 16.000 in 2024.

The various reforms and measures put in place (governance of establishments, grouping of organizations, catch-up system for the production of social housing) have not made it possible to change the situation.

"Achieving the 25% rate of social housing in each municipality depends more on the will of local elected officials than on technical feasibility constraints," the report accuses.

He also notes the "maintenance of spatial segregation": "the fewer priority neighborhoods a community has on its territory, the less it makes the effort to house low-income households outside of these sensitive neighborhoods."

The institution recommends that the allocation of points to each application file, called rating, be systematically adopted and deliberated by the intercommunal bodies, "to ensure the transparency of the allocation procedures".

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.