The Abbé Pierre Foundation urges the government to act now to prevent rental evictions

In an interview with AFP, Christophe Robert calls for the mobilization of all players in the sector and announces the establishment of a monitoring and alert system to ensure the protection of 30.000 households threatened with deportation.

QUESTION: You have requested, in vain, the extension of the truce on rental evictions which ends on Tuesday. Do you regret the government's decision?

ANSWER: "We made this request because the health, social and economic situation remains very difficult and because we are in a phase which will be perilous in the sense that 30.000 households are potentially threatened with eviction, it is enormous. , we've never known that.

It seemed to us that the best way to avoid social disasters was to extend the truce even further, but by using it to support people towards other housing solutions, unfortunately that was not retained.

Now the huge stake is that alternative housing solutions be proposed before pronouncing the eviction manu militari, and that in the event of difficulties in certain territories, the families can be maintained in the housing while compensating the owners simultaneously, time to find a solution.

Q: The government has already made a commitment to stagger the evictions and find a solution of rehousing or accommodation. Is it sufficient?

A: "The fact of saying" we must find alternative housing solutions as much as possible for people threatened with eviction ", that is a good thing, but there is a strong weakness in the fact of saying" if there is no accommodation, it will be accommodation ”.

The emergency accommodation sector is saturated. We have certainly opened 43.000 places since March 2020 and these places will be maintained until 2022, this is good news but we will not continue to put people in accommodation, it is not satisfactory. You leave a home, you have your furniture, your beds, your three kids, what do you do with your furniture? And hosting is for how long? Three days ? One week ? A month ? And after what happens?

The other weakness is to say that everything will depend on the offer available locally, which means that a prefect can say to himself "I apply the circular well by offering accommodation".

This is the reason why we are going to set up with other associations a monitoring and alert system to ensure that there is a logic of protection and to identify the places where there would be problems and where it would be necessary to reframe the shot in relation to government instructions.

Q: Should we expect another unprecedented rise in rental evictions in the coming years?

A: "Everything will depend on the ability or not of the government to deploy a policy of anticipation so that there are not tens of thousands of households who find themselves over the months in a situation of delinquency with evictions in two and a half, three years.

It is the time bomb that we alerted to at the start of the year and which worries us greatly. The equation is simple: you have an increase in the number of RSA requests, a very significant increase in unemployment, you have people who have not necessarily been covered by state aid for a year, who see their resources very sharply decrease and which will find themselves in difficulty of payment.

Now is the time to act, in eight or ten months it will be too late. The challenge is to put all the players in motion in all the regions, it is to put around the table, under the aegis of the prefect, the bailiffs, social landlords, private landlords, associations, social work teams, CAF etc. And set goals. "

Interview by Marine PENNETIER