A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #341 - STOP THE DEMOLITION OF SOCIAL HOUSING BY ANRU -- Return of the Residents' delegation (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In the previous issue of Courant Alternatif we report on the 
mobilization of collectives of HLM residents and architects against 
controversial demolition projects. On Wednesday February 7, 2024 in the 
morning, despite the rain, more than 150 representatives from all over 
France waited to be received in front of the headquarters of the 
National Agency for Urban Renewal (ANRU). Faced with the unprecedented 
scale of the mobilization, the ANRU finally agreed to receive a 
delegation, and committed to organizing a new meeting in March.
Originally, a collective of residents and a collective of architects 
from the Mirail district in Toulouse fought together against the 
demolition of an HLM district of high architectural and environmental 
quality. They note that identical struggles are being waged in many 
other cities throughout the country and that the ANRU has destroyed more 
than 160,000 homes since 2004. They then call for the formation of a 
National Collective to stop the demolitions. More than 58 local 
collectives, associations of architects and urban planners, as well as 
the DAL, the CNL, the Construire magazine, and more than 800 
professionals and activists from the city have responded to date. They 
formed the National Collective and launched an appeal: Stop the ANRU 
demolitions! For an immediate moratorium! This appeal declares that "in 
all the cities, all the neighborhoods where the ANRU engages in a policy 
of demolitions, the population and the collectives are mobilizing to 
oppose it, that everywhere is born the desire not to remain isolated, to 
unite our strengths nationally to be stronger and make our voice heard." 
Finally, and very reluctantly, the ANRU arranged to meet the 
representatives of the collective on April 24. The collective traveled 
with specific files under their arms, concrete cases to be addressed, 
realistic proposals to make to think together and build a project in 
line with the reality of the ecological and social needs of the 
population. He calls for a moratorium on destruction and the 
establishment of collaboration with residents and architects to 
rehabilitate existing social housing. Instead of responding to this 
request, once again trampling on the "consultation" included in the 
texts, the ANRU categorically opposed it and proposed instead to discuss 
the improvements to be made to ANRU 3 without returning on planned 
destruction, its representatives arguing that they were only the 
financial implementers and that it was necessary to approach the mayors 
to contest the destruction or rehabilitation/gentrification projects in 
progress. Well-known method of exhausting strength by passing the buck 
to dilute responsibilities. Mayors who increasingly see themselves as 
small local lords with disproportionate powers increased by the 
Kasbarian law, which legalizes clientelism by granting them even more 
prerogatives in the allocation of social housing.

However, the national collective does not let itself be disappointed and 
does not give up. They will go see the senators and deputies one by one 
if necessary to try to influence the decisions of the ANRU Board of 
Directors. It's a track! they will continue to make themselves visible 
and challenge everywhere during the congress of mayors, at the Social 
Union for Habitat which will be held in September in Montpellier, for 
example. The collectives are located everywhere and will be able to 
intervene throughout France during events to advance this idea of a 
moratorium.

The country is facing a housing crisis. According to former Minister of 
Housing Olivier Klein, it is "the social bomb of tomorrow". The damning 
report from the Abbé Pierre Foundation illustrates this reality: 1.1 
million inhabitants are deprived of personal housing and 4.2 million 
suffer from poor housing. The number of people without accommodation has 
increased by 40% in one year: every evening, in October 2023, more than 
8,000 people on the street, including 2,800 children, were turned away 
by reception centers . The majority of salaries revolve around the 
minimum wage; 2.4 million households, 70% of whom are eligible for very 
social housing (PLAI) and are waiting for HLM (25% more than in 2017). 
Demand is exploding, but there has never been so little social housing 
built: less than 80,000 in 2023. And the ANRU, funder of social housing 
rehabilitation, is determined to destroy them.

Rental evictions started to rise again at the end of Covid, in 2022: 
17,500 with the help of the public force, even before the vote in 2023 
of the vile Kasbarian-Bergé law further reduces rights tenants. Public 
investment in Housing, which represented 2.2% of GDP in 2010, fell to 
1.6%, representing an annual budgetary saving of 15 billion euros. And, 
since 2017, cuts in APL have cost HLM organizations 1.3 billion euros 
per year, which have also suffered an increase in VAT, from 5.5% to 10%.
The Caisse des Dépôts, whose funds are supposed to build social housing, 
forecasts a drop of a third in HLM production with a horizon of 66,000 
HLMs per year, far from the needs.

By appointing Kasbarian as Minister of Housing, Macron is sending a 
clear message: for him and his government, housing is not a right but a 
commercial product whose only interest is to speculate on the markets 
and generate considerable profits. Tenants' rights, regulations on 
habitability standards, regulated rents for HLM, are all obstacles to 
the free market and must disappear. The government, with the SRU law, 
imposes in each city a rate of 25% of social housing (PLAI and PLUS), 
but has decided to include intermediate housing, the rents of which have 
nothing to do with social.

This determination to destroy common property does not only concern 
housing. Minister Le Maire announces a cut of ten billion euros in 
social budgets. School, Health, Culture, Environment, unemployment 
insurance, nothing is spared to liberalize the economy and reorient its 
industry to massively produce weapons, bombs, shells; prepare for war. 
And that's just the beginning!

Nadia M.

For information "Stop the demolitions of the ANRU, for an immediate 
moratorium, for rehabilitation" Sign the Appeal on the website of the 
National Collective link: https://sites.google.com/view/stopa...
build.archi@gmail.com
You can listen to actualitedesluttes.info from May 6, 2024

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4192
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