The case was completed in two days. Tuesday, May 9, the communist daily The Marseillaise reveals that the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône has opened a deficiency finding procedure targeting the city of Marseille under the Solidarity and Urban Renewal Act (SRU). Between 2020 and 2022, the municipality has only achieved 38.2% of the objectives for the creation of social housing, while requests have jumped from 40,000 to 45,000. A slap in the face for an executive whose housing is one of the priorities.
The charge mainly targets the town planning assistant, Mathilde Chaboche, representative of the citizen collective Mad Mars, accused of slowing down the granting of building permits. It is relayed by the voices of many deputies, yet members of the same majority, who criticize him for not taking sufficient account of the social emergency of the city. On Wednesday, the elected official, an elegant forty-something with a lively and sometimes brittle mind, was summoned at the end of the afternoon by the mayor, Benoît Payan. And announces in the process that she is resigning from her delegations.
The dismissal of one of the most emblematic assistants of the Marseille Spring, who is demanding a change of methods after the twenty-five years of mandate of Jean-Claude Gaudin (Les Républicains), constitutes the first real political crisis suffered by Benoit Payan. Rather clever since coming to power to maintain the balance within his majority, the various left-wing mayor this time left no choice to his elected official. “Very upset” by letter from the prefect, he announced that he was going “Personally get involved in housing, as [il l’a] made on [la rénovation] schools “.
“Palpable” discomfort
Friday, May 5, he came out unscathed from a municipal council yet announced as explosive because of the emotion caused by the assassinations that are bloodying Marseille. A long solemn speech, the presence of families of victims invited by the municipality and the emergency vote of a deliberation doubling the night staff of the municipal police defused the criticisms of the right on the management of security. The resignation of Mathilde Chaboche gives an unexpected breath of fresh air to the group formed around the president of the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis, Martine Vassal (various right). “The malaise surrounding municipal action is more palpable every day and the eviction of Mme Chaboche is ultimately only a new stage in the dislocation of this majority”pings the opposition, in a press release.
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