Timetable for ban on renting thermal strainers will not be kept, senators warn

“It is now obvious that the timetable of the Climate and Resilience Law cannot be met and poses a significant risk of approximately 18% of rental housing leaving the market,” write Dominique Estrosi-Sassone (LR), Viviane Artigalas (PS) and Amel Gacquerre (UDI) in an inventory of proposals resulting from their information mission on the housing crisis.

“Without abandoning our ambitions in terms of renovation, it seems inevitable” to postpone to 2028 the ban on signing or renewing leases for housing with energy label G, the worst (8% of the French stock), instead of 2025 as currently planned, they add.

Under current terms, housing classified F (10,5% of the stock) can no longer be rented from 2028 and E (22,4% of the stock) in 2034.

The parliamentarians take up the demands of employers' organizations, for whom the entry into force of these measures risks reducing available housing and further aggravating the housing crisis.

In their battery of recommendations, they also call for a return to numerous savings measures supported by Bercy, such as the refocusing of the zero-rate loan, which they are, on the contrary, calling for to be strengthened.

Exemption from inheritance tax on purchases of new housing, a demand from the Federation of Real Estate Developers (FPI), is also suggested as an urgent measure to revive sluggish production.

Some of the proposals are contained in texts to soon be examined in Parliament, such as the simplification of the rules for transforming offices into housing, or the reform of rental taxation to create a “private landlord status”.

The increased possibility for mayors to regulate furnished tourist accommodation such as Airbnb, or to allocate social housing more freely, are also in the pipeline.

The parliamentarians are also asking for exceptional funding from social landlords in order to relaunch HLM production, denouncing "the slaps in the face" of their financing under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

The reform of the rules of the High Financial Stability Council (HCSF), proposed in the report to encourage the granting of real estate loans, was buried on Tuesday in the Assembly in the face of Bercy's reluctance.