MAP. Does your municipality comply with the law regarding social housing?

Not even half. Twenty years after the entry into force of the law which requires medium and large towns to respect a minimum rate of social housing, only four out of ten municipalities subject to it respect it. This is the result of our analysis of data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, as the 105th Congress of Mayors of France opens, which must examine precisely this question.

Consult the situation in your municipality on our interactive map or with our search engine.

This law requires the municipalities concerned to have at least 25% social housing, or 20% in less tense urban areas, under penalty of paying a solidarity contribution each year. Only municipalities with more than 3,500 inhabitants (or 1,500 inhabitants for the Paris region), which belong to an urban area of ​​more than 50,000 inhabitants including a municipality of at least 15,000 inhabitants, are concerned. Clearly, this law applies in medium and large towns located in large urban areas.

An effective law

“More than half of the social housing built over the past twenty years is built in catch-up municipalities”, however, assures Thierry Repentin, PS mayor of Chambéry and president of the national SRU commission, who wants to remain positive, even if he admits not being surprised by the results. In detail, as of January 1, 2022, out of 2,157 municipalities subject to the SRU law, 1,163 cities are below the threshold, 826 are beyond it, 149 are exempt and 19 have not yet communicated their data.

Indeed, the law is still effective. The proportion of cities with a social housing rate of less than 15% has decreased. They now represent less than a third of the municipalities concerned compared to 43% in 2004, while the number of municipalities concerned has increased.

But the reduction in APL, the abolition of the housing tax and now the “zero net artificialization” hamper the possibility of building social housing, indicate the mayors contacted by franceinfo.