Since 2001, CDC Habitat Sainte-Barbe based in Freyming-Merlebach has been responsible for renovating and renting out nearly 13,000 homes for former miners in Moselle Est. The public interest company also launches rehabilitation projects for older buildings.
Next to 13,000 homes for former families of miners in Moselle Est have been managed since the early 2000s by CDC Habitat Sainte-Barbe based in Freyming-Merlebach.
Created by the Caisse des Dépôts when the coal mines closed, the company must quickly find solutions to renovate and rehabilitate these homes, some in very poor condition. “3,500 were modestly called “uncomfortable”: there were no bathrooms or toilets. When we arrived, 6,500 homes were also heated with coal“, explains Guillaume Exinger, the general director of Sainte-Barbe. In around twenty years it has invested nearly 671 million euros to upgrade this park, particularly in Behren-lès-Forbach and Farébersviller.
An old church transformed into housing
These homes are being remarketed”for a very wide audience“: only 35% of tenants to date were minors or grew up in a family of miners. CDC Habitat Sainte-Barbe is today focusing on construction work energy renovation . “We have gone from the black of coal to the gray of gas. Now it is in renewable energies that we must invest“, explains her boss. Like the heat pumps that she must install in a old medieval church of Saint-Avold which is becoming an apartment building with the tourist office on the ground floor.
“We are a public interest company, explains its boss. Our role is also to revitalize the entire territory by bringing in new residents.“. Make the territory more attractive by offering a housing offer located in the city center and meeting the expectations of tenants, a real “challenge” which Guillaume Exinger is passionate about. Several other atypical projects are underway in Moselle-Est, like this old Porcelette school which will be transformed into a senior residence “with a garden, elevators and everything necessary. Maybe some of our future customers will even be former students!“, laughs the general director of Sainte-Barbe, who hopes to be selected for other projects in the Cœur de ville program.
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