Homelessness and a poor quality of life are on the rise in France

Homelessness and people living in poor conditions are on the rise in France, the Abbé Pierre Foundation (FAP) warned.

In its annual report presented on Wednesday, the foundation estimates the number of homeless people in France at 330,000.

That is 30,000 more than last year and an increase of about 130 percent compared to 2012, the date of the last INSEE study on the subject.

The report also tackles the government and the “inadequacy” of its efforts to solve the problem.

“It’s still a pretty conservative estimate,” says the foundation’s director of studies, Manuel Domergue.

In total, 4.15 million people live in poor housing conditions, the foundation estimates, including people without personal housing, people who live in a place that is much too small for them, or people who are deprived of basic comfort (kitchen, toilets, heating) .

The “halo” of poor housing, which includes situations such as fuel poverty or tenants with unpaid bills, affects 12.1 million people, according to calculations by the FAP, or more than one-sixth of the population.

This year, the FAP looked at the specific vulnerabilities of women and LGBT+ people in a chapter titled “The Gender of Poor Housing”.

The research shows that they are at risk of ending up in a bad home at four points in their lives: leaving the parental home, divorce from marriage, inheritance and widowhood.

Inflation, which has accelerated significantly in 2022, is wreaking havoc on low-income households by increasing their limited costs (housing, travel, food), the foundation notes.

For example, a single-parent family can quickly go into the red simply by paying these rising costs, the foundation explains.

As in previous years, the FAP is holding back the government, ruling that 2022 has been “a blank year or nearly in the fight against poor housing”.

“The gulf has seldom been greater between the state of poor housing on the one hand and the inadequacy of public responses to make housing affordable on the other”.

The aid disbursed to mitigate the impact of inflation, such as the tariff shield, is not sufficiently targeted, according to the report.

The support for the renovation of MaPrimeRénov housing, whose envelope was increased in the 2023 budget, is considered insufficient because it finances few efficient renovations and places an insurmountable burden on the poorest.

“For the richest on the one hand, permanent, massive measures, on the other hand, one-off measures for the poorest”, was the indignant general representative of the foundation, Christophe Robert.

The “public effort for housing,” which brings together support for people and production, represented just 1.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2021, a figure that has not been this low since at least 1991, the FAP says.

The control of rents and the fight against Airbnb-type seasonal rentals are still too timid, it adds.

On social housing, the austerity measures of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term have been maintained, despite the increase in the Livret A rate, which has increased the debt of social landlords.

The state even pursues policies “sometimes against the poor,” the Foundation says, citing unemployment insurance reform, which aims to shorten the duration of benefits, or the anti-squatter law.

On the most urgent front, if the government has given up cutting places in emergency shelters, “the very fact that it is considering reducing them is a rather alarming signal for us,” said Christophe Robert.

On Wednesday, during the official presentation of the report at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris, the Deputy Minister of City and Housing, Olivier Klein, is expected to respond to criticism and present the new ‘Housing First’ plan, which aims to to facilitate the return of homeless people to housing.