A major French charity organisation, citing a nationwide housing shortage, has called on the government to levy a punitive tax on landlords who do not rent out or sell their vacant properties.
A report by the Abbe Pierre Foundation said that more than two million people in France live in overcrowded conditions or in substandard housing, sometimes without cooking facilities or basic plumbing.
It said another 509,000 people live in shelters, primitive residential hotels and mobile homes, or have been forced to live with relatives due to a lack of affordable housing.
The economic downturn of the past two years has exacerbated an already serious problem for low-income and middle-class families, according to Mr Patrick Doutreligne, a director of the foundation.
He said the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy is addressing the housing shortage in a piecemeal fashion that will not provide any long-term relief.
‘Other than a policy of building emergency shelters, there is an absence of any policy or political engagement by the government,’ Mr Doutreligne said.
Mr Sarkozy has consistently opposed the idea of expropriating private property to make housing available to the poor or punishing landlords who keep units vacant.
But on Wednesday, a senior government official appeared to relent in the light of the dramatic tone of the charity’s report.
Mr Benoist Apparu, the Secretary of State for Housing, said he would recommend ‘a major programme to purchase empty housing units’ in city centres across the country for low-income families.
He suggested that the government spend €4.7 billion (S$9.2 billion) this year to build 140,000 new subsidised apartments, and provide tax credits and other incentives for property owners who rent or sell housing to the state.
France overall has an estimated 2.5 million vacant homes and apartments, Mr Apparu added.
A study released this week by the University of Paris-Dauphine said that home ownership has become an impossible dream for an increasing proportion of the French middle class.
Mr Sarkozy had pledged to make that dream possible for more people and instituted a system of low-cost, subsidised mortgages for first-time home buyers.
But in the light of the financial crisis, fewer new homes are being built and banks have been slow to lend money.
New housing starts dropped from 370,000 in 2008 to 330,000 last year, according to figures released by the government and the construction industry. The number of rentals on the market dropped to 1.5 million from 2 million.
In the past, opposition Socialist Party leaders have said the government should seize or expropriate vacant buildings from recalcitrant landlords and convert them into low-cost housing.
The Abbe Pierre Foundation has published an update on housing every year for the past 15 years.
Its latest report said that 600,000 French children live in substandard or overcrowded housing and that the situation is ‘dramatic’ for at least 400,000 of them.
The insalubrious conditions, the charity’s study added, can cause respiratory infections and sleep disorders, which in turn affect their performance in school and their social behaviour.
Telling figures
~ More than two million people in France live in overcrowded or substandard housing, according to the Abbe Pierre Foundation.
~ Another 509,000 people live in shelters, primitive residential hotels, mobile homes or with relatives, it said.
~ France has about 2.5 million vacant homes and apartments, said Secretary of State for Housing Benoist Apparu.
Source : Straits Times – 5 Feb 2010
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