Geneva: an elected official wants the city to turn into a owner

ThoseGeneva policy
An elected official proposes that the city turns into a large property owner
While the housing shortage continues to rage, the environmental city councilor Matthias Erhardt breaks a taboo. Right’s dismay.
Illustration image with the Artamis district and the Pointe de la Junction in Geneva.
Lucien fortunate
What if the city of Geneva became a preponderant player on the real estate market? In these times of inexorable shortage (with a vacancy rate of 0.46% In 2024) and ever more untenable rents, some elected officials think of it very low, on the left in particular. City councilor Matthias Erhardt resolved to say it aloud. In a motion filed this week, the environmentalist asks the Administrative Council to be “ambitious” and to develop “a strategy for acquiring housing”.
“Nothing prohibits the city from buying by the end of apartments or buildings,” said Matthias Erhardt. By what means? For example by drawing from the envelope devolved to investments. With an annual amount of 180 million francs, it has only requested half of its potential in recent years.
Not without yield
The municipality would have the tools to carry out such a policy. Its “management”, municipal real estate management (GIM), already watches over nearly 5,000 social housing units and on 400 free rent housing. This represents 5% of the city’s housing stock. A modest owner, in short, but who has an “armed wing” to build new homes thanks to “his” foundation for social housing (FGVLS).
“Exorbitant rents weigh on the household budget, especially those with low -income, but also on the middle class,” continues Matthias Erhardt. His will also consists in increasing the offer of apartments in free rent. “The yield would not be nonexistent, but not excessive either,” said this ASLOCA member.
Of “left ideology”
In reality, the idea is not new. She was in good place in the Greens’ program for this legislature. But she remained a dead letter. The executive has hardly been proactive in terms of preemption, activating its right only three times since 2020 (out of 200 theoretical possibilities).
A policy that has nevertheless been vigorously fought each time in the hemicycle by the right -wing parties. The opposition is consistently welcomed this new motion, of “pure left ideology”. “It is up to the deprivation of becoming owners, not the community,” reacts the UDC Mathieu Romanens.
The PLR Kevin Schmid, who sees it as “electoral demagoguery”, observes that the city already experiences “all the sorrows of the world” to maintain and renovate its heritage. “She has neither the financial capacity nor the operational capacity to embark on such a policy,” he said.
The motion will be subject to the municipal council in the coming months. His fate will greatly depend on the result of the municipal elections.
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