Will tens of thousands of households be forced to leave their social housing? The Minister for Housing, Guillaume Kasbarian, outlined in The echoesThursday April 11, the outlines of a reform project on this subject, which could be integrated into the bill aimed at promoting housing for the middle classes. In particular, he wants tenants who have become too rich to leave their social housing.
“When we have 5.2 million social housing units in France and 1.8 million households legitimately applying to enter it, is it normal that they are prevented from doing so when there are people within the social housing whose situation has changed significantly since they were allocated their housing?, he asks himself in the economic daily. Franceinfo tells you more about his comments and this measure which provoked strong reactions among associations in the sector.
1 What is social housing?
Social housing, or low-rent housing (HLM), is housing whose rent cannot exceed a certain amount per m2, recalls the Ministry of Ecological Transition (also responsible for housing). Its access is conditional on resources. The objective of social housing, the beginnings of which date back to the end of the 19th century in France, is to enable low-income households to benefit from lower rents than private housing stock.
The management of HLM is entrusted to social landlords. The State pays them financial aid for construction, in exchange for compliance with rules formulated in an agreement signed by both parties. There are several categories of social housing, depending on the amount of aid granted by the State to the lessor. The greater this is, the more the lessor will have to, in return, offer low rents.
France currently has 5.3 million social rental housing units (or nearly 16% of the main residence stock), which can accommodate 10 million people, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition. On average, “rents for social housing are half as high as those for private housing.” Renting an HLM allowed you to save money, in 2020 in France, 225 euros per month on average compared to the private sector.
2 What are the rules for accessing it?
To access social housing, you must apply for it and not exceed a maximum income, which depends in particular on the number of people to be accommodated and the location. In Paris and its inner suburbs, the annual income of a couple (the reference tax income noted on the tax notice) must not exceed 50,603 euros. For a couple with two children in the region, this maximum amount is 57,069 euros. Overseas, a single person must not receive more than 26,491 euros to benefit from HLM. A simulator allows you to check whether you meet the access conditions.
Once constituted, the tenant’s file is examined by an allocation commission, which verifies, in particular, the income ceiling of the applications. It is possible to refuse accommodation offered by a landlord, but the request can be considered as “lower priority” if the refusals are repeated, underlines Action Logement. To continue to be valid, the applicant’s file must be renewed each year. You generally have to be patient: the waiting time for HLM, which varies depending on the profile of the tenant and the location of the accommodation requested, can range from a few months to several years, notes a Senate report.
The number of households waiting for social housing reached 2.6 million in 2023, a record figure, up 7.5%, announced the Social Union for Housing (USH) at the end of January, cited by the ‘AFP. Among these files, 1.7 million households applying for first housing and 700,000 already housed in the existing stock.
3 What is the government proposing?
The Minister for Housing wants “re-examine the relevance of continuing to occupy social housing” For “those who have largely exceeded the income ceilings” And “whose heritage (…) has evolved”. According to him, more than 8% of current HLM tenants would no longer be eligible for social housing of the same type as the one they occupy, if they requested one today. When contacted, the Ministry of Ecological Transition did not specify the origin of this figure. In 2022, a survey (in PDF) of the Ministry of the City had nevertheless determined that, for the housing studied, 8.1% of tenants exceeded the authorized resource ceilings, a relatively stable share since 2015.
To fight against this phenomenon, the delegate minister wants to demand from social landlords “a regular and obligatory assessment” tenants of social housing. “This will first make it possible to question the renewal of the lease. And then to question the level of rents.” The bill, which will be presented to the Council of Ministers in May, should also give more power to mayors in the allocation of social housing, or in the decision to sell it, according to Guillaume Kasbarian. The minister also committed to maintaining “the target objectives of 20 to 25% social housing” in the municipalities concerned by the Solidarity and Urban Renewal (SRU) law.
4 What would that change?
Difficult to say precisely at this stage. Landlords are already required to regularly carry out surveys of their tenants, in order to check that the accommodation still meets their needs. They look at the number of people living in the home and the financial resources of the household. If the accommodation is under-occupied, the lessor must offer new accommodation to the tenant. Depending on the profile and the location of the accommodation (tense area or not), the refusal of three proposals may result in the termination of the lease. The only protected categories are people aged over 65 and those with disabilities.
If the household income represents more than 1.5 times the fixed ceiling, and for two years in a row, the lessor can ask the tenant to leave the accommodation. Here again, certain vulnerable tenants are protected. Finally, if the tenant’s income reaches 1.2 to 1.5 times the maximum income, he must pay a solidarity rent supplement (SLS), called additional rent. This rule only concerns a small part of the social housing stock, explained on franceinfo Emmanuelle Cosse, president of the USH. Moreover, “the State asked that this not be applied”, notably “in the name of social diversity”.
The change will therefore lie more in the presentation of the results of controls carried out by donors, believes Emmanuelle Cosse. The bill will ask donors to formalize “a summary of these controls in a report sent to the prefect every year”explains the former Minister of Housing.
5 How was the proposal received?
The comments of the Minister for Housing aroused indignation among social landlords. THE “lifetime lease (…) does not exist”recalled Emmanuelle Cosse, with reference to the title of the article of Echoes. The ministry, contacted by franceinfo, ensures that the expression, although placed in quotation marks, is that of the newspaper and not of Guillaume Kasbarian. “We use this expression ‘housing for life’ to create controversy, while the big subject today is that we are not building enough social housing”. Same story with the National Housing Confederation, which pointed out on THE “cynicism”according to her, of the proposal. “Rather than producing social housing, [Guillaume] Kasbarian prefers to reduce the HLM stock (…) Pitting the working classes against each other and sparing the richest and real estate speculation”she denounced.
On the left, the communist senator from Paris Ian Brossat deplored on the social network a “pitiful demagoguery”recalling that “only the elderly and people with disabilities are protected” expulsion. LFI MEP Manon Aubry, for her part, denounced a “hunt for the poor”.