Housing crisis hits one in eight

THE HOUSING crisis is affecting nearly eight million people across France, with 3.6m living in sub-standard housing or even on the streets, a housing charity says in its annual report.

Fondation Abbé Pierre, the charity set up in memory of the priest who founded Emmaüs, said many of the people affected were not tenants but house owners.

The report comes as French statistics agency Insee said that of those affected by the housing crisis 43 per cent have a job, with some even being in management jobs.

Abbé Pierre president Raymond Etienne said thatthe government had to start listening. “We cannot continue to live and be housed as we are now.”

Speaking just 16 months before the presidential elections, he said that, with one in eight of the country’s 65m population facing problems, “Housing should be a national
priority.”

The charity’s figures showed that 2.7m people were living in severely overcrowded, insanitary conditions or housing without toilets or heating.

Insee’s statistics showed there were 250,000 people homeless at the beginning of 2011 and 2.9m in sub-standard accommodation, but it uses different criteria than Abbé Pierre. In the Paris region alone, there are 33,000 homeless or in city shelters.

There are also 66,000 in long-term reinsertion centres; with 30 per cent being children and 40 per cent women.

Abbé Pierre has called for the government to reinforce the law on Solidarité et au Renouvellement Urbains, which imposes a quota of 20 per cent of social housing in communes with more than 3,500 inhabitants. It says 500,000 homes were needed each year for several years.