The Assembly adopts a bill against “degraded housing”

The Senate will now be able to examine this text, which was debated for two days without a minister responsible exclusively for housing, due to lack of allocation at this stage of this portfolio in the new government.

A situation deplored by the oppositions, who also regretted that the bill only concerns a limited aspect of the housing issue, in a crisis situation in the sector.

The text was, however, adopted with 126 votes to one, with the support of the presidential majority and opposition groups, except LFI and the RN who abstained.

The Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, welcomed the adoption of a text of “concrete solutions”, stressing that there were “1,5 million homes in France which are fragile”.

To facilitate the work before permanent deterioration, the bill makes it possible to create a collective global loan for co-owners, in order to access credit. By amendment, the government supplemented it with a “public guarantee” for co-ownerships in serious financial difficulty.

The text also provides for a new expropriation procedure for owners of housing affected by a danger or unsanitary order, before the situation requires the demolition of the building.

On Tuesday, MPs voted to strengthen criminal sanctions against “slum traders”, who exploit vulnerable people by renting them degraded accommodation.

A communist amendment added, as an additional penalty, the impossibility for these lessors, for up to 15 years, to acquire real estate other than their main residence.

Criminal sanctions have also been passed against rental without a written lease.

A new obligation has been introduced for co-ownership trustees to inform the co-owners and occupants of a building about the current procedures against substandard housing.

Despite often consensual debates, the deputies scrapped on Tuesday around an LFI amendment, narrowly rejected, which called for "reestablishing the minimum requirement of a ceiling height" of at least 2,2 meters for housing, judging that a recent decree had given a “gift to slumlords” by authorizing a height of 1,80 m.

“This law will allow us to move forward,” said communist Stéphane Peu, but “the basic measure would be to respond to the housing shortage crisis.”

It is a “welcome” text, but which “does not form a housing policy”, added ecologist Julien Bayou.

Insoumis Hendrik Davi, whose group abstained to highlight a "lack of ambition", judged that there was a need for "a large public housing service, which builds 200.000 homes per year".

The RN also abstained, in the face of the "major shortcomings" of the bill, accusing it in particular of a "lack of attention to co-owners faced with increases in charges".