To promote social diversity, Elisabeth Borne said on Friday that she no longer wanted to allocate housing to “the most precarious people” in priority neighborhoods. “It’s a double whammy: you are poorly housed, we recognize the fact that you have difficulties, but you will not be able to qualify for the cheapest accommodation,” regrets the Abbé Pierre Foundation.
“We are faced with a false good idea which could have serious consequences”, reacts Friday October 27 on franceinfo Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé Pierre Foundation after Elisabeth Borne’s announcements for working-class neighborhoods. The Prime Minister unveiled a shock measure: prefects have been instructed not to allocate social housing in priority neighborhoods of the city to households benefiting from the enforceable right to housing (Dalo).
These “Dalo” families have a right to housing recognized by a departmental commission. Nearly 35,000 of them will have obtained this recognition of the right to housing in 2022. More than 93,000 “Dalo” households, however, remain waiting for rehousing, the majority in Île-de-France.
franceinfo: Do you understand this proposal?
Christopher Robert: We are faced with a false good idea which could have serious consequences, because the Prime Minister says that it will no longer be necessary to rehouse people recognized as priority due to their social situation, under the Dalo, in the priority districts of the city . It’s a double whammy: you are poorly housed, we recognize the fact that you have difficulties, but you will not be able to qualify for the cheapest housing, those that might be available in these areas. This will reduce the capacity to implement the right to housing.
“If we want to achieve social diversity, we must do the opposite”
Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé Pierre Foundationat franceinfo
This means not preventing people from being able to access housing, but increasing the solutions that are offered throughout the territory. However, here, the risk is that we slow down the possibility of rehousing households recognized as Dalo priority in a certain number of housing units, particularly in the neighborhoods where housing is the least expensive.
At this stage, there is no government project that would offer an alternative solution to these most modest families who would be refused permission to settle in a difficult neighborhood?
I do not believe. Already, Manuel Valls, Prime Minister in 2015 after the Charlie Hebdo attack, had wanted to prohibit the housing of people recognized as Dalo priority in priority neighborhoods. And then he understood that in fact it was in the other direction that he had to act. There was therefore the law relating to Equality and citizenship of 2017 which, precisely, imposed quotas for the rehousing of priority households outside the priority districts of city policy. Today, the objective is 25% allocation of social housing to the lowest-income households. We are at 17%. This is where you have to go all out! Otherwise, this means that families in an absolute emergency situation, recognized as Dalo priorities, will not have access to around a third of the HLM park in France.
Do you regret a form of perverse effect?
This is why I call it a false good idea. Social diversity must work in both directions. It cannot work by banning part of the housing stock from households in greatest difficulty. We at the Abbé Pierre Foundation know to what extent this can have deleterious effects and serious consequences for the most fragile among us.
Do you blame mayors who do not apply the SRU law which requires municipalities with at least 50,000 inhabitants to have 20% social housing?
This is a good illustration of what I’m trying to explain. We are closing the door to a third of social housing in priority neighborhoods, but we are not making the effort where there are 3%, 4% or 5% of social housing. Since the law was passed in 2000, half of social housing has been built in municipalities subject to the SRU law, so it is a rather good law. In the vast majority, the law is respected. And then there are a third of municipalities which do not respect it, some of which knowingly do not do so and prefer to pay penalties. This is where we need a strong State which requires the construction of the missing social housing.