"The rents of the private park have increased twice as fast in Marseille and Nice as in Paris or Lille", observes Mr. Houdmon, while over the last ten years the regional poverty rate has increased twice as fast as the national average .
"With around 850.000 poor, we are far from the image of the rich region", underlines the director of the Foundation, for whom, despite everything, "there are also very rich in the region, and therefore strong social inequalities ".
The tourist attractiveness of the region and especially its coastline "comes at a high price", according to him, with accommodation at "the highest prices in France outside Paris". Result: overcrowding appears to be a chronic disease, comparable to what is found in Ile-de-France.
He particularly pointed the finger at the metropolis of Nice, "the most expensive in France after Paris", which is experiencing the highest rate of tension in France to access social housing.
Despite this large gap between an increasingly poor population and increasingly expensive housing, "no metropolis in the region has implemented rent control," regrets Mr. Houdmon.
The Abbé Pierre Foundation has also noted a constant decline in social housing programs since 2016, in a region that is however very lacking in this area. Of the 194 municipalities subject in Paca to the SRU law on the obligation of 20% to 25% of social housing, only 13 respect these quotas.
The city of Marseille, where the unworthy housing crisis was brought to light by the drama of the rue d'Aubagne, in which eight people died in the collapse of two buildings, on November 5, 2018, records alone nearly half of the social housing applications in Bouches-du-Rhône.
"At the level of the region, we had reached 12.000 social housing units built or approved in 2019, but the figure fell to 7.000 in 2020", denounced in July the prefect of the region, Christophe Mirmand, in an interview with the 'AFP, specifying that today "the objective set for the region by the minister (Editor's note: Emmanuelle Wargon) is 12.000 social housing units per year".
"Things have been moving for a few months", admitted Mr. Houdmon, about urban renewal in Marseille, while estimating that overall "the results have been mixed since 2018 and the rue d'Aubagne".