The Senate in turn votes on measures against squatters and unpaid rent

The vote was acquired by 252 votes against 91. The text will now return to the National Assembly.

"Without distorting it", the senators reworked it to clearly distinguish the situation of the squatter from that of the tenant in difficulty. Housing Minister Olivier Klein hailed "a balanced text".

Included on the Senate's agenda at the request of the majority Renaissance RDPI group, the text of Macronist deputy Guillaume Kasbarian was all the more welcomed by the senatorial majority as it takes up measures from a bill against the squat of Dominique Estrosi Sassone (LR), adopted by the Senate in January 2021.

Following several highly publicized cases, one of the emblematic measures of the Kasbarian bill triples the penalties incurred by squatters, up to three years' imprisonment and a fine of 45.000 euros.

The Senate retained the possibility of penalizing the tenant who remains in the premises following an eviction judgment that has become final, but abolished - with a favorable opinion from the government - the penalty of six months' imprisonment incurred, keeping only the fine penalty.

On the left, the majority communist and environmentalist CRCE groups have scrapped against a text which, according to them, will lead to "a degradation of the rights of tenants and human rights".

In the background of the debates, the problem of poor housing.

In its annual report presented on Wednesday, the Abbé-Pierre Foundation estimates the number of homeless people in France at 330.000. That's 30.000 more than the previous year.

For unpaid rent, the text speeds up legal proceedings in rental disputes, in particular by systematically including in lease contracts a "automatic termination clause".

Activating this clause would allow a landlord to obtain the termination of the lease without having to take legal action and thus be able to obtain an eviction more quickly.

The senators have restored the possibility for the judge to automatically grant a payment period to the tenant who does not request it himself.

"We wanted to strengthen the section against squatting and fight against the dilatory use of procedures by tenants in bad faith", indicated Ms. Estrosi Sassone.

The centrist Valérie Létard welcomed an "essential rebalancing" and "a lot of work to provide tools in the prevention of unpaid bills".

On the left, the president of the CRCE group, Eliane Assassi, regretted that "the evil is not treated at the root" and that the government does not attack "unequal access to housing".

According to the ecologist Guy Benarroche, the text should be called "proposal of law condemning the most precarious to the street".