It’s a cry of warning. “We are preparing for a dramatic return to school for Parisian and Ile-de-France students,” warns Jacques Baudrier, housing deputy at Paris City Hall. In question ? The situation of the rental market in Paris, and particularly small spaces, while the housing crisis is unprecedented. “Private sector players no longer have anything to rent and are closing real estate agencies, the jug of water is overflowing, the crisis situation is exponential, we will find ourselves with tens of thousands of students in the streets”, s panics the deputy.
For months, signs of the difficulties to come have been accumulating. A study of the SeLoger.com platform for example, showed last January that the number of apartments for rent had fallen by 50% in one year, and by 73% in three years in the capital. Less pessimistic, Corinne Jolly, president of Pap.fr (individual to individual) affirms that the number of advertisements fell by 12% between May 2023 and May 2024, and speaks rather of a “phenomenon of deterioration from year to year “.
“Paris is becoming a pied-à-terre city”
Difficulties accessing credit, increase in borrowing rates, etc., the reasons are multiple. According to Jacques Baudrier, Paris loses at least 8,000 rental homes per year. Whereas there were 600,000 thirty years ago, and even a million just after the war, Paris now only offers 350,000 rental homes. “It has been complicated for years but now we have reached a level of crisis never seen before,” alarms Barbara Gomez, delegated advisor in charge of rent control, rental platforms and tenant protection.
The fault lies with second homes, in particular. According to a report from the Parisian Urban Planning Workshop (Apur) made public in December, the number of unoccupied housing has exploded in recent years. From 14.1% in 2011 according to INSEE figures, their number reached 18.8% in 2020 (262,000 out of 1.4 million). Nearly one in five homes in Paris is unoccupied. Secondary and occasional residences now represent 9.6% of the Parisian housing stock.
“Paris is becoming a pied-à-terre city,” worries Jacques Baudrier. He adds: “We will soon have more empty housing than allocated private housing. » The elected communist proposes a solution: “Multiply by two or three the tax on vacant housing and the housing tax on second homes. » “We could free up 100,000 homes,” repeats Jacques Baudrier.
13,000 social housing units for students
Because on the Paris City Hall side, we claim to be at the maximum of what is possible to do, given the skills available to the community. The city already allocates 19% of its social housing production to students. It produces 600 new ones each year, and even 850 this year, or 10% of the production of student social housing in France, and even a third of what Ile-de-France provides each year. But with a total of 13,000 social housing units for students, this remains very insufficient to meet the needs of the 300,000 young people studying in Paris, even if not all of them are looking for accommodation.
“If you can’t find accommodation then you give up your studies, or you go further and further and when the travel times increase it’s more tiring. When we know that more than half of the students work on the side, there is a risk of failure,” comments Barbara Gomez. To cope with this particularly tense year, particularly because of the Olympic Games which absorb all the available supply, Corinne Jolly advises not looking for accommodation after the event, but from the month of June.