• Faced with the social housing crisis, the Rennes metropolitan area is launching a new system, called Sans foncier fixe, to urgently accommodate precarious people waiting for housing.
  • The principle is to install modular habitats on fallow land waiting to be developed or for which no project has yet been decided.
  • The advantage of this type of transitional habitat is that it can be easily moved to another site.

Until now, it was a wasteland bordering the railway tracks and belonging to the city. But in recent days, four modular housing units have just been installed at 35-39 rue Auguste Pavie in Rennes. They are waiting for their tenants who will move in at the beginning of the summer. Equipped with a wooden terrace and a small garden shed and dressed in metal cladding, these modules are available in two versions: a studio of 20 m² and a T2 of 30 m². The particularity of these prefabricated housing is to be movable. Delivered by truck, they can be moved to another site in one day.


Called Sans foncier fixes, this new transitional housing scheme aims to respond to the housing crisis. Because if Rennes has often been held up as an example in terms of social housing, the Breton capital now sees all its lights turned red. "The indicators are not good and I do not hide this observation," admits the socialist mayor Nathalie Appéré. In the metropolis over which she presides, more than 26,000 applicants are waiting for social housing. "The waiting period now exceeds three years whereas it was eighteen months a few years ago, continues the socialist elected representative. This is unheard of and unacceptable! A consequence in particular of the crisis in which the real estate market is stuck with prices that have soared and new construction at half-mast.

Use temporarily available land

Faced with the crying need for housing, the Rennes metropolis, very attractive, has therefore revised its cursors upwards in its new local housing program (2023-2028) with the construction of 5,000 new housing units per year, a quarter of which will be social housing. But before the programs come out of the ground and to respond to the emergency, the community must find other solutions while complying with the objective of zero net artificialization.

This involves the use of each m² available. Because if land has become very scarce, Rennes and the neighboring municipalities still have available land waiting to be developed or for which nothing has yet been decided. Hence the idea of temporarily installing modules to accommodate priority people waiting for housing, whether they are people in high exclusion or women with children who are victims of violence. "This is an emergency solution pending a more sustainable solution," said Paul-Marie Claudon, secretary general of the prefecture of Ille-et-Vilaine.

The comfort of a classic furnished apartment

Built on the assembly line by two local players, Mayers, formerly Réalité Build Tech Industries, and the Legendre group, these modules also offer all the comforts of a classic furnished apartment with a small kitchen, a bathroom and a sleeping area. "We must break the image of these movable housing because they meet the same regulations as permanent housing," says Vincent Legendre, president of the eponymous group.


By the end of the year, twenty-two of these homes will have been installed on six temporarily fallow sites in the Rennes metropolis. "It's still quite modest for the moment and it will not of course solve everything but it is an additional brick," says Nathalie Appéré.

  • Housing
  • Social housing
  • Poor housing
  • Real estate
  • Construction
  • Precariousness
  • Rennes
  • Ille-et-Vilaine
  • Brittany
  • Society