This is too much for housing professionals. Faced with the "hesitations" of the head of state, the presidents of the main employers' federations of construction and real estate (FFB, Pôle Habitat, Fnaim, FPI, Unis) denounce the behavior of Emmanuel Macron in an open letter published Monday by Le Parisien. They demand an "electroshock" to restart the production of new housing. An update on their demands.

What are the reasons for their anger?

Supposed to respond to the problems of the housing crisis in France, after several months of consultation with stakeholders, the Housing component of the National Council of Refoundation (CNR) was to deliver its conclusions, eagerly awaited, on May 9, but the restitution was postponed to June 5, "due to an agenda constraint" according to the ministry. A delay that goes wrong.

"This is total misunderstanding. We worked for four months, we were good students. We know that we will not be heard," Loïc Cantin, president of the National Real Estate Federation (Fnaim), told AFP. "The time is no longer for observations, procrastination or hesitation," attack the signatories.

Emmanuel Macron has not helped things. In an interview with Challenges published on 10 May, the President of the Republic called for a new "conference of parties" to respond to the housing crisis. "We cannot expect everything from government reform," said the head of state, castigating "a system of public overspending for collective inefficiency".

What are their demands?

Impatience is great on the side of professionals. "When will the state take the true measure of the risk of economic, social and societal bomb that represents the crisis of the 'power to live' that our fellow citizens face?" "An electric shock is essential: immediately applicable and powerful measures are needed to prevent this crisis from worsening further," they write.

"We are now waiting for no longer an umpteenth consultation, but the expression of a clear and ambitious presidential will as well as quantified measures, a rapid implementation schedule and financial resources adapted to the challenges," the employers' federations respond to Emmanuel Macron.

"After all that has been done, commissions, seminars, committees, meetings, debates... on housing, I believe that today, everyone has given what they had to give as proposals, and we must decide because the urgency is there, "plagues Olivier Salleron, president of the French Federation of the building.

What difficulties encountered in the field?

The world of housing as a whole - developers, social landlords, associations... - was already making its impatience heard, in the face of a situation that is deteriorating on all fronts. The pace of new housing construction has plummeted in recent months, a victim of rising construction costs and difficulties in accessing credit. And the number of households waiting for social housing has never been so high (2.42 million).

"The exasperation, in fact, is general because the housing situation is very bad," says Emmanuelle Cosse, president of the Social Union for Housing, which represents social landlords. "We have a feeling of embolism of the whole access to housing, and opposite, we have no proposal, no perspective, no answer. And that partly explains these reactions," she continues.

"We do not know why, both at the Ministry of Housing and everywhere, we agree with us, but at the level of the President of the Republic, it blocks," reports Pascal Boulanger, president of the Federation of Real Estate Developers (FPI), who would like to "make him understand that he is wrong: housing pays off."

What is the government's response?

"We do not discover the current difficulties and the government has been fully mobilized for several months," said the Minister Delegate for the City and Housing, Olivier Klein, in a statement sent to AFP. The restitution of the proposals of the CNR Housing "will make it possible both to formulate immediate solutions" and "structural responses", he adds.

  • Real estate
  • Economy
  • Housing
  • Emmanuel Macron