Is life better without social housing? A tug of war in Provence over social housing

The standoff between the prefecture and this town of 21.000 inhabitants is symptomatic of the tensions surrounding the SRU law in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA), where only 14 of the 197 municipalities concerned reach the required threshold of 25% social housing.

While "the system is completely dysfunctional," state officials accuse, the LR mayor of Allauch, Lionel de Cala, deplores a law that is "no longer at all adapted to the reality of our communities." The elected official denounced to AFP a "purely punitive logic," with penalties of €1,3 million for his town, where social housing accounts for only 7,5%.

On March 27, the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, Georges-François Leclerc, signed a decree to take control of a 2.500 m² plot of land in the commune in order to build around fifteen social housing units. A few days later, Lionel de Cala responded with an online petition, signed by more than 2 people as of Wednesday evening.

While "the underlying issue remains limited," the mayor concedes in this text, he insists on the importance of "preserving the framework and quality of life in his community."

"The mayor of Allauch has a distorted image of what social housing residents are like," protests Francis Vernède, director of the Foundation for Housing the Disadvantaged (formerly the Abbé Pierre Foundation) in Paca: "They are simply people with modest incomes who need help with housing," he continues.

For him, the prefect simply came to recover "a territory lost to the Republic."

"We pay for peace and quiet"

"With 8% of the French population, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region represents 25% of the shortfall" in the face of the SRU law, regrets Robin Hamadi, director of the regional HLM association Paca and Corsica.

According to him, if it is "complex for a mayor to promote social housing to his population", it is because of this "unconscious systematic shortcut" in which social housing is equivalent to "delinquency and degradation of the living environment".

"When you ask anyone, the city councillor of Allauch or almost anywhere else in France," the answer is always that these are "ugly buildings, blocks and towers. (...) It's the cliché we're dragging around," laments Mr. Hamadi.

On the Allauch square, where the church, the town hall and the famous "Bar du Mistral" from the series (Editor's note: since the series left the Marseille district of Panier) surround a pretty shaded fountain, Benjamin Forbin, 65, explains that he will sign the petition: "Allauch should not become like certain places in Marseille!"

These accommodations "don't bother me at all, as long as I don't live nearby," explains another resident, who prefers to remain anonymous. "We pay for peace and quiet, because it's very expensive" in Allauch, "and we're here to really have peace and quiet," continues this 39-year-old self-employed person.

"We cannot provide housing in the same way" in large urban centers and in Allauch, insists the mayor: "we must not, at any cost, want to call into question what has been the very DNA of the town for hundreds of years."

But if "tranquility" is in the "village", work is most often in the city, underlines Francis Vernède: "Every day, people leave Allauch to go to work in Marseille, to collect sometimes potentially substantial salaries."

With 240.000 applicants for social housing in the Paca region, and only 21.000 allocations in 2024, the urgency is to build, insists Robin Hamadi, emphasizing the fact that "social landlords now know how to build beautiful buildings" and "have really made progress in management over the last 15-20 years."