“We have deaths on the streets and still no Minister of Housing. We are in weightlessness,” denounces the elected Parisian environmentalist Julien Bayou. The deputies begin this Monday, and until Thursday, the examination of a consensual bill to fight against substandard housing. “Technical” and “without a global vision”, the text on the Assembly program is despite everything “welcome”, judges Julien Bayou, in order to fight against “sleep merchants who oppose the work and reign in terror in co-ownerships.
Between 400,000 and 420,000 homes in the private metropolitan stock as well as 100,000 overseas are today considered potentially unsanitary or presenting risks to the safety of their inhabitants. Thus, this text, inspired by a report submitted at the end of October by the mayors of Saint-Denis Mathieu Hanotin (PS) and Mulhouse Michèle Lutz (LR), must “simplify judicial and administrative procedures […] to speed up work on degraded condominiums,” explained Patrice Vergriete in December. “The longer we wait to intervene on a co-ownership in difficulty, the worse it is upon exit. »
What does the text provide for against substandard housing?
Concretely, it provides for the creation of a new procedure for the expropriation of owners of housing affected by a police order (danger or unsanitary order), before the situation becomes irremediable and requires the demolition of the building. . To better equip municipalities against the arrival of slumlords, it intends to simplify the use of the right of pre-emption by communities.
In terms of prevention, the text aims to facilitate work ahead of definitive deterioration, for example by creating a collective loan for co-owners, in order to access credit. It also makes the duty to alert professional trustees more effective and introduces an obligation to inform co-owners or occupants of a building where housing is affected by procedures to combat substandard housing.
The bill finally provides for measures aimed at accelerating the construction of housing within the framework of so-called “national interest” operations, which have a specific legal regime.
A “social bomb” in progress
Christophe Béchu, the Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, will be on the government bench. He was already the minister responsible for Patrice Vergriete, who would like to be reappointed to Housing when the government team is completed. The two parties and their teams are still discussing this bill against “degraded housing” and the 340 amendments tabled, AFP learned.
But while there is a serious housing crisis, the deputies will above all once again demand the “major law” promised on the subject. Many elected officials, even the majority, are warning of the “social bomb” underway.