The public authorities will launch an exceptional rescue plan for four large degraded private condominiums in Marseille, a city plagued by unsanitary housing problems, President Emmanuel Macron and the town hall of Marseille said on Tuesday.
“For four of them (degraded co-ownerships), we are going to carry out operations to requalify degraded co-ownerships of national interest (ORCOD-IN) to mobilize exceptional means of intervention and better fight against slum landlords. It is urgent, ”explained the president to the regional daily Provence.
The town hall of Marseille also informed AFP of these four planned ORCOD-INs, as well as an intervention plan for other degraded private condominiums.
“Heavy and massive” operations necessary
During the States General of Housing, in 2022, the town hall of Marseille had estimated that it would take “heavy and massive” operations on 29 condominiums. The left-wing mayor Benoît Payan had also called for heavier sentences for “sleep merchants”.
The ORCOD-IN system, launched since 2017 in Ile-de-France to save adrift condominiums in Mantes-la-Jolie, Grigny, Clichy-sous-Bois and Villepinte, allows public authorities to expropriate or buy back more easily to destroy or renovate, to finance work in the common areas and to better deal with security issues. One of the great ensembles of Nîmes also benefits from it.
housing crisis
With 40,000 slums and eight people dead in the collapse of two unsanitary buildings in the city center in November 2018 rue d’Aubagne, Marseille is particularly affected by the housing crisis.
It has large, very degraded private condominiums, many of which are bucolic only in name, Bel Horizon, Les Rosiers, le Mail, etc. Residents and social workers sometimes speak of “jungle” or even “vertical slums”.
These large complexes, which sometimes have several thousand inhabitants, have fallen into an infernal spiral: poverty, unpaid charges leading to the degradation of common areas, the appearance of drug trafficking networks and the arrival of slum landlords. In these condominiums, the debts for the payment of charges and suppliers reach colossal sums, up to 1.3 million euros.
More details on Wednesday
“I would never have imagined that in France. My first apartment was catastrophic. The electrical panel was not in order, the sockets did not work, ”testified a resident of Rosiers. Rent: 700 euros per month.
“Sew up the city will not be done without housing”, recently warned the regional director of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation, Francis Vernède, stressing that the State had “the power to invest massively”.
Emmanuel Macron should detail this aspect concerning unworthy housing on Wednesday during his visit to a degraded condominium in the east of the city, on the third and last day of his tour in Marseille.