“Is social housing still a priority? »

2023-05-23 07:00:06

Owhere is the pact of trust between the government and social housing? It was to be signed at the 2022 HLM congress with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Housing. Will it be for that of 2023? Nothing is less sure. Barely have there been contacts with the ministries on avenues of reflection, but the impression given does not bode well, in the absence of a fruitful dialogue with the government, for a positive outcome.

At this point, it is good to recall the sentence attributed to Abbé Sieyès: “Power comes from above, trust comes from below. » Because, at the point where we are, there is work to be done to regain confidence!

Spending on housing in France increased, between 2016 and 2021, from 42 to 35 billion euros, while, at the same time, revenues increased by 20 billion from 68 to 88 billion euros! At the same time, personalized housing allowances suffered a drop of 2.5 billion euros, and a drain of the same order weighs on the organizations of HLM which house the households with the lowest incomes.

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Can we say that social housing remains a priority when, at the same time, expenditure for the private rental sector, of the Pinel type, has not ceased to grow, rising from 1 billion to 2.5 billion euros in ten years, creating, as the President of the Republic himself said in an interview with the magazine Challenges published on May 10, “a paradise for real estate investors” ?

More than 2.3 million people to request an HLM

These questions are all the more resonant since the very marked increase in the Livret A rate, which is the basis for the cost of the debt of HLM organisations, has gone from 0.5% to 3%, which makes it difficult, on average constant, any new ambition to produce new HLM housing. However, low- and middle-income households are increasingly excluded from the private rental market and from social access to property, blocked by interest rates and construction costs.

They are more than 2.3 million of our fellow citizens to request a HLM. In 2016, more than 120,000 approvals for the construction of an HLM had been programmed, but only 95,000 in the last two years, 2021 and 2022, and probably less than 80,000 for 2023 and 2024. An increase in credits for production new is required.

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Especially since a strong ambition concerning construction comes up against the essential compliance of our HLM heritage with the standards of the ecological transition voted by Parliament, standards which are currently below France’s new European commitments.

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