Housing crisis: it is urgent to give the territories the means to meet the needs of the inhabitants

The objective of this meeting: to launch discussions on the decentralization of housing policies, in accordance with the territorial agenda proposed by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne. Urban France welcomes this framework for discussion and intends to participate fully in the exchanges.

For urban elected officials, the State must remain committed to housing policies as the guarantor of national solidarity and equality between the inhabitants of the territories. Housing is a universal need and right. It is in the implementation of the objectives, in the tools and in the management and distribution of funding that it must trust the territories which know their needs and those of their populations.

In order to carry out the project of differentiating housing policies, urban elected officials propose to prioritize the contractualization between the State and the HAEs around four priority axes:

• Reinforcing the already existing and recognized delegations to the leading intermunicipal authorities for housing policies, particularly in terms of social housing;
• The management of all or part of the MaPrimeRénov' credits and the Support Service for Energy Renovation (SARE) to intermunicipalities on the model of the delegation of aid for stone which has shown its effectiveness over time, as noted by the reports successors of the Court of Auditors;
• Access to the definition of zoning and to all the tools of public regulation currently reserved for tight areas;
• The right to experiment with land tools so that urban territories can successfully implement ZAN in terms of the economic model but above all of social justice.

They also formulate two points of vigilance:

• Urban elected officials are opposed to an “all or nothing” block of powers which, along with housing, would include emergency accommodation.
• Urban elected officials recall their attachment to a universalist vision of social housing that protects and allows social diversity.