84th HLM Congress in Montpellier: “We will ask the new Minister of Housing to throw her predecessor's law in the trash”

Aline Veyrié, présidente de la CNL 34, et Eddie Jacquemart, président de la CNL. Midi Libre – Florence Guilhem

À la veille de l’ouverture du congrès national HLM, à Montpellier, la Confédération du logement faisait un point sur la situation du logement des locataires.

"We are in a major crisis of social housing. 2.5 million people are waiting for social housing in France, 2,000 children sleep on the streets in a G7 country. With the appointment of a hard-right government this weekend, there is concern about the housing policy that will be defined, with budgetary austerity in the background", worries Eddie Jacquemart, president of the National Housing Confederation (CNL).

The only glimmer of hope is the appointment of the new Minister of Housing and Urban Renewal, Valérie Létard, "someone who is on the ground and who has a social conscience, and who I know from having already shared analyses with her on this subject. What I hope is that she will not take over from Kasbarian, and that she will indeed be the worthy successor to Jean-Louis Borloo, since she is from Valenciennes like him”, he comments.

A full-scale hold-up against social housing

So to hammer home the urgent needs of social housing, the CNL launched a petition on September 16 to demand a freeze on rents in social housing and the construction of social housing. Eight days later, the petition had already collected 28,000 signatures.

The CNL president will also take advantage of the platform he will be given at the HLM congress, which begins tomorrow, to list the proposals they will make to the new minister. “We will ask that she throw the Kasbarian 2 law, which unravels the SRU law, in the trash. Mayors must continue to build social housing. We will also propose that she make mayors who do not respect the SRU law ineligible.”

And that's not all. “We are also calling for the abolition of the RLS (solidarity rent reduction), this so-called housing assistance set up since 2018 for the most deprived households, which is in fact a tax on social landlords, with an annual levy on them of 1.3 billion euros, or nearly 10 billion to date that could have been devoted to the construction and renovation of social housing", he gets annoyed.

"900,000 people are behind on their housing payments rent"

Third and final request: a rent freeze. If the increase set for rents on January 1, 2025 is applied, it will be around 10% for tenants. Astonishing in a context of rising rental charges linked to electricity and gas bills. "900,000 people are behind on paying their rent in the social housing sector. With the planned rent increase, this figure will explode“, Eddie Jacquemart expects.

Once again, the CNL's return to school will be offensive. No choice in times of crisis and great precariousness of a population already under pressure. And don't talk to him about budgetary constraints, because “that's not the people's problem. Their problem is finding housing“. What he expects from the congress? That the landlord federations stand alongside the CNL to demand real measures on social housing and to say with one voice: “We don't want the RLS anymore.” Not a given.