Anxiety for thousands of families: the winter break ends Friday. Associations fear a multiplication of evictions of tenants due to unpaid rent, inflation having undermined the budget of the most modest. It will again be possible to evict tenants from their accommodation from Saturday, after five months of prohibition of this measure, except exceptions, imposed by law.
In 2020 and 2021, the truce period had been extended due to the Covid crisis, significantly reducing the number of expulsions: 8,100 in 2020 and 12,000 in 2021, compared to 16,700 in 2019, according to the latest available data. Those of 2022 are not yet known. Associations now fear that the number of evictions is on the rise again, due to the “casualization” of low-income households due to inflation.
Increase in food and energy prices
“The increase in food and energy prices has really weakened households, which can cause unpaid rent”, explains to AFP Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation, who asks a tripling of the energy check and an increase in APL to support the most modest.
The Abbé-Pierre Foundation warns in particular of the first “very worrying signals”, citing data from a recent study by the Social Union for Housing, which represents social landlords. According to this, “nearly half” of HLM organizations recorded last December “an increase of more than 10%” in the number of households overdue in rent payment by more than three months, compared to a year earlier.
An Observatory of Arrears in April
Contacted by AFP, the Ministry of Housing indicated that it was going to “bring together an Observatory of unpaid bills in April to analyze the dynamics” and the effect of the measures in place, such as the tariff shield limiting the rise in the price of energy.
The most modest households “have a budget to the nearest euro, they have no room for maneuver to deal with price increases”, even if they are limited by certain aid, underlines with AFP Nathalie Latour , Director General of the Federation of Solidarity Actors, which brings together hundreds of associations fighting against exclusion. “Some people go without food to be able to continue paying their rent and keep their accommodation, it’s so essential,” she adds.
Rehousing, a headache for precarious households
Oriane (assumed name), for example, only has one meal a day. His income is used to pay his landlord first in order to “not aggravate” his rental debt. This 30-year-old, who lives in the Paris region, did not manage to pay her rent for several months, after having stopped working due to her state of health. Her landlord has initiated proceedings against her and now faces eviction, despite her resuming payments. “I am anxious, today I have zero solution, I do not see the end of the tunnel”, she testifies to AFP.
Relocating remains a headache for precarious households. According to a study by the Abbé-Pierre Foundation of 66 evicted households, 32% of them had not found fixed accommodation one to three years later.
Acceleration of procedures in the event of unpaid rent
Another subject of concern for associations: the potential effect of the bill by Macronist deputy Guillaume Kasbarian, currently being examined at second reading in the National Assembly. It plans to toughen penalties against squatters and to speed up procedures in the event of unpaid rent.
For Jean-Baptiste Eyraud, spokesperson for the Right to Housing (DAL) association, this is a “cruel text, of great social brutality”. “If it is adopted, it will weaken the prevention of evictions, the current mechanisms will no longer be able to work and things will go much faster,” he laments to AFP.
The adoption of this bill may thus result in an increase in the number of evicted households, the associations worry. The DAL is organizing a rally on Saturday at 3 p.m. Place de la Bastille, in Paris, to denounce this text and more broadly defend the right to housing for all.