Since this Friday, April 1, it is again possible to evict tenants from their accommodation, after the five months of winter break. Gold “there is currently enormous tension on the rental stock“, emphasizes the Abbé Pierre d’Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes foundation, which has just published its annual report. She regrets that no candidate plans to intervene to lower property prices. Our guest this Monday is Véronique Gilet, regional director of the Abbé Pierre foundation in the AURA region.
France Bleu Isère: The winter break has just ended, whereas it had been extended in 2020 and 2021 due to the health crisis. Do you fear an increase in evictions?
Veronique Gilet: Yes indeed. 30 to 40,000 households were suspended following “leniency measures” in 2020-2021. And these deportations will certainly resume. In the territory of the metropolis of Lyon alone, 1,500 public force competitions were decided two years ago and therefore will certainly be implemented. This means that households will leave their homes with the police with relatively few prospects of rehousing to date, because there is enormous tension currently due to the drop in construction and the drop in allocations in social park. To avoid a wave of evictions, real political will is needed.
In your annual report, do you indeed observe that social housing is not following, is not compensating for the rise in rental prices?
He doesn’t follow at all. There were years when public efforts made it possible, in particular in 2009 or in 2017, to hold a production that was approximately at the level of the stakes. We are talking about impoverishment issues: households do not particularly want to be part of social housing, simply today, these are the only housing units with an affordable level of rent for low resources, whether resources from work or social minima.
It is necessary to pay more and more expensive to rent an apartment, especially in the metropolises, in particular in Grenoble. Are you advocating for the regulation of rents in the metropolis?
Yes, we are obviously in favor of measures that prevent prices from slipping ad infinitum. Now, what we have highlighted in our regional report is also the need to propose additional regulations. The control of rents will perhaps be able to “moralize” the market a little, but it will not lower prices. And one way of having prices that are affordable is also to continue to produce, to continue to rehabilitate.
And then, it also means sanctuarizing housing which, today, is in the process of changing prices, housing which remained at market levels 15 years ago and which today receives company holidays or a contract exit. This is also where public policy must go to recover housing, protect people and maintain price levels below the market.
How do you view the five-year period that is ending in terms of housing? The President of the Republic promised in 2017 that no one would sleep on the street anymore…
Of course, we look a little surprised, with dissatisfaction or even anger, when we see the number of people on the street, when we see the figures that I have given you on people who are in danger of becoming shelter or homelessness. Because today, in tense cities, when you have no prospects for bouncing back and you wait in the social park, you have no other solutions.
You interviewed the various candidates on housing. Do you feel they are strong enough and prepared on housing policy?
The difficulty is that the subject of housing is political but also eminently intimate and personal. So unfortunately the subject has not become a constituent political issue of the programs, at the same level as employment. However, there is a real need for the public force to invest. It is not only a cost, it also involves production and therefore work, employment. And then, quite simply, it also allows people who, behind, are able to bounce back if they don’t have to look all day for accommodation.
Who are the most vulnerable groups in the face of this increase in rents? Families, single people?
In fact, what is complicated is above all the level of resources. Of course, a single person, with a single input of resources will be more fragile. If, in addition, she is employed, she may be just above the thresholds for housing assistance and therefore not benefit from it. And so, especially in Lyon, we have seen single people in the private sector with effort rates – the share of the budget devoted to housing – reaching 70 to 80%, which is considerable.
But it’s not just single people, there are also single-parent families, retired people, young people who may be in difficulty. In fact, there is no standard profile, it is the resources that define the needs. We have people who have a very low standard of living. The question of purchasing power is in all languages among the candidates, but the question of increasing purchasing power through price intervention is not in any program.
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