The Senate is looking into “degraded housing”, in the absence of a “major housing law”

Despite measures considered useful, the government's text "is not the one that the French are waiting for to provide remedies to the housing crisis which is taking on more worrying proportions every day", launched Senator LR Dominique Estrosi-Sassone, at the unison of many colleagues.

The president of the Economic Affairs Committee turned to the new Minister for Housing, the Macronist Guillaume Kasbarian: "May you in your new responsibilities, have your hands a little freer than your predecessors" to take up this challenge.

The text on "degraded housing" is only the "first step in a long series of shared work to respond" to the challenges of the sector, assured the minister, who made the article of the "supply shock “what does the executive intend to create to produce more housing.

“Nearly 1,5 million homes are degraded”, representing “as many homes and families experiencing unacceptable living situations”, he underlined to defend the bill, already adopted without difficulty at first reading by the National Assembly.

“Massive phenomenon”

Failing to be "the major housing law" expected, the centrist rapporteur Amel Gacquerre (UDI) considered that this text had the merit of tackling "a massive phenomenon", which is "not only the affair cities with high poverty rates or priority neighborhoods.

One of the main objectives is to facilitate the start of work upstream in co-ownerships, before definitive damage requires demolition.

The text notably creates a collective global loan, which trustees will be able to request, in order to improve access to credit for these co-ownerships and to save time compared to a multitude of individual files.

In favor of this new loan, the senators however deplored the lack of financing of the "public guarantee" that the government had added via an amendment to the Assembly.

After removing it in committee, they agreed on Tuesday to restore this guarantee, even if the rapporteur Amel Gacquerre considered the minister's promise to specify its financing "in the finance law" "not very concrete".

The Senate also validated one of the other flagship measures: a new procedure for the expropriation of housing affected by a danger or unsanitary order. With the objective of anticipating intervention by public authorities, without waiting for irreversible deterioration.

The prerogatives of mayors in granting "rental permits" in areas of degraded housing were reinforced by the senators, who also gave them the possibility of automatically carrying out a structural diagnosis of buildings located in degraded habitat area.

“Powerful text”

The Senate has also reshaped one of the main additions of the deputies, considered too vague: the creation of a label of “collective interest trustees” with recognized competence to support fragile co-ownerships. A provision presuming that HLM operators would automatically meet the required criteria has been deleted.

To fight against slumlords, the Senate, on the other hand, approved measures inserted by deputies, which had toughened criminal sanctions against owners renting substandard accommodation.

As during the debates in the Assembly, the left challenged the government about a decree of July 2023 which opens the possibility, according to its detractors, of renting in certain cases housing with a ceiling height of only 1,80 mr.

“This decree encourages substandard housing,” denounced environmentalist senator Antoinette Guhl, who called in vain for its removal, like the communists and socialists.

Examination of the bill, suspended at half past midnight, must continue Wednesday evening.

Faced with the "social bomb" feared by housing stakeholders, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal recently assured that he wanted to create a "supply shock". He also announced a modification of the SRU law (Solidarity and urban renewal), setting quotas for social housing in certain municipalities, which must be presented before the summer.

“I hope that it will be a powerful text that meets the expectations of the French and local elected officials,” Mr. Kasbarian said on Tuesday about this next bill which is causing serious concern on the left.