The Court of Auditors pinpoints public data on housing, which it considers incomplete and too complex

"The capacity of the State seems insufficient in view of the ambitions displayed", notes the Court, which studied six databases among the twelve which it considers essential in order to carry out "a public policy which represents an annual cost close to 40 Billions of Euro's".

It points the finger at the complexity of the databases, their lack of updating and, in some cases, the insufficient reliability or exhaustiveness of the data they contain.

According to the Court of Auditors, this poor quality data makes "particularly fragile the objectives set by the government in terms of housing".

She cites in particular the example of the objective of building 500.000 new housing units per year, "regularly put forward publicly", which ignores work "which since 2014 has estimated these annual needs at 370.000 new housing units".

In its summary, the Court is also concerned about a "risk of increasing dependence on private data". Many real estate sites today produce geolocated data on rents, sometimes so precise that they are fed into public databases.

The Court notes that the successive reforms of the housing tax have deprived the State "of essential data, since it made it possible to associate geolocated information on housing with the social situation of their occupants".

Among its recommendations to the government, the Court recommends that the government "make reliable and update the main databases" relating to housing policy.

Finally, it emphasizes the need to decompartmentalize databases "not only between administrations and central or decentralized State operators, but with the local authorities concerned".