Sofia* arrived from Marseille at the beginning of September at the Crous Croix-du-Sud residence, in the 8th arrondissement of Lyon. Having been installed for almost a month, she has not yet taken her things out of her bags. “I’m waiting for a housing transfer,” she explains. Having come for her nursing studies, she plans to drop out and return home “because of housing”. “The list of problems is long,” she said, offering us a seat.
She mentions the “deplorable” state of the furniture or even “the roller shutter which is broken and no longer opens” and “the hob which did not work”. “I regularly have power cuts, and I find myself unable to revise in the dark,” she laments. Despite everything, she considers herself “lucky”. In the same building, students found mold stains on the walls, took cold showers and had water leaks. Not to mention cockroaches or bedbugs, his “phobia”.
“We are 18 years old, we leave our parents, we change cities for our studies and we cannot live properly. It weighs on our morale,” says Ishak. Three floors down, he too has his shutter stuck and lives in the dark. “Two days after my arrival, I discovered bedbugs. I had to fend for myself to find a solution. I purchased, at my own expense and without being reimbursed, all kinds of products. » That evening, the young Montpellier resident slept in his chair.
Ishak felt ‘humiliated’
In his room of around ten square meters, for which he pays nearly 400 euros per month, everything is “square”. On its shelves, the food is arranged in the same way as in a supermarket aisle. Even his shoes are stored in special boxes. Nothing is lying around. So when the establishment’s management felt the pests were his fault, accusing him of leaving crumbs or being messy, he felt “humiliated.” “I live in horrible conditions to start my university studies and what’s more, I’m not considered,” he says indignantly.
Left to his own devices, he put his sheets in the only freezer available in the building to effectively deal with the problem. “Except that there is a lack of space because the entire residence does the same thing,” he points out. “More than half of us must be looking to find rehousing elsewhere. And without a positive response. It is not normal to leave students in this situation, especially at the cost of rent. I have no one here, I spend my time wandering outside so as not to end up in this room. »
“We cannot afford to relocate students elsewhere”
When dealing with pests, the protocol is the same everywhere. Frédéric Léonard, general director of Crous Lorraine, ensures that a strict system is put in place to “fight collectively against these insects”. But to deal with unsanitary problems, you need more than a sprayer. Requested by 20 minutes, the Crous de Lyon did not respond to the publication of its lines. HAS France 3, director of student life Stéphanie Thomas, recognized that the Croix-du-Sud residence was “aging”. “We have serious problems with the social landlord in terms of maintenance of the building,” she replied, ensuring that she was doing “case by case” to find solutions for students.
In Villeneuve d’Asq, the dilapidated state of the residences was publicized every year until the communist deputy Alain Bruneel took up the subject in 2021. Since then, they have been either destroyed or renovated. For Frédéric Léonard, general director of Crous Lorraine, a new problem then appears: “maintaining the supply” during the rehabilitation work. Because the demand for student housing in university campuses is exploding. As revealed by a survey published by Street Press, the number of Crous accommodations has increased by 2.3 over the last sixty years, while that of students has increased by 10.5. At the start of the 2022-2023 school year, 173,000 Crous accommodations were available across the country for 2.9 million students.
So, if there is a hiccup in a room, “we cannot afford to rehouse the students elsewhere, all the places are taken,” confides Marcelline Guiffan, communications manager for Crous Paris intramuros. The media underlines that, of the 60,000 housing units promised by Emmanuel Macron during his first mandate, only half of the accommodations saw the light of day six years later.
Around 4,850 more homes by 2029?
The elected LFI of the Rhône Gabriel Amard then plans to “highlight” these problems, like his comrade from the North. “We must challenge the government on these subjects in one way or another,” he exclaims. While waiting for the government to really take up the matter, the metropolis of Lyon voted on Monday for “financial support for the construction of student social housing in the region”.
The community, which expects to receive 15,000 additional students to the 180,000 already present, will invest 3.5 million euros, spread over three years, to “help finance the creation, by the Crous and social landlords, of nearly 4,850 additional housing units in the region between 2023 and 2029.” On this date, Sofia and Ishak will have finished their studies, the question is to know under what conditions.
*The first name was changed at the request of the interviewee.