A reform based on “untruths”: this is what Nathalie Appéré, mayor of Rennes and president of the Metropolis, thinks of the bill presented this Friday in the Council of Ministers. Guillaume Kasbarian, now in charge of housing in the government, today details the new rules which must govern access to HLM. Measures awaited with apprehension by players in the sector, who feared the worst.
Key idea of the text: putting an end to “social housing for life”. Thus, tenants whose income is 20% higher than the resource ceiling two years in a row will have their lease terminated automatically. And they will be asked to pay extra rent as soon as income exceeds this ceiling (the threshold is set at 20% today). The government also wants the assessment of assets to be taken into account, so that a tenant inheriting property can no longer reside in HLM. All to promote “better rotation of social assets”, according to Guillaume Kasbarian.
He also proposes to reform the famous SRU law which requires municipalities to have 25% social housing. From now on, this quota will be able to include a quarter of intermediate housing, intended primarily for the middle classes. Often, these households are eligible for social housing but are not given priority in the queues, which are now as long as an arm due to the shortage of HLM. The goal: to stimulate the construction of these properties, whose rents are below the market price, relatively rare today.
Our file on the social housing crisis in Brittany
“The State no longer funds”, denounces Mayor Nathalie Appéré
So many proposals which arouse strong criticism among players in the sector. And among some of the mayors, including that of Rennes, Nathalie Appéré, who has made housing one of her political markers. The elected official considers it “insane to think of solving the housing crisis by removing tenants whose situation has improved from social housing”. According to him, the reform will not free up many places in the social sector, at least in the Breton capital. Only 165 households pay extra rent on 17,000 homes with the Metropolis’ social landlord, Archipel Habitat.
Nathalie Appéré admits that access to housing for the middle classes is a serious problem. “But it cannot be done to the detriment of the more modest classes,” she retorts. The idea that there would be “social housing for life” is also false in her eyes: above all, she believes that “residential pathways are blocked” because of “unaffordable prices”. And while the government plans to allow social landlords to further increase rents, the mayor also gives zero points: “Real household incomes are not increasing, the APL is not increasing, and the State no longer finance the construction of social housing which we lack. »
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