No Government has managed to reverse the trend

Fifty-two years have passed since the appeal launched by the abbé Pierre. Two generations successive and the drama of the underhoused remains in France a question unfortunately still unresolved. No Government has managed to reverse the trend. On the contrary, demographic factors, such as elongation of the life and the relatively high birth rate from our European or sociological neighbors, such as the increase in the number of homes, from 19 to 26 million over the past twenty-five years, came complicate an already dramatic situation.

Of course, in recent years, considerable efforts have been made. The annual number of housing construction was barely 300,000 between 1997 and 2001. It is 450,000 this year. This mobilization is useful. It is important in how it is implementing in its effects. However, it is not sufficient.

Meet the expectation of six millions of poorly housed people in our country is not only a quantitative dedicated means evolution but also a qualitative change in the nature made remedies. This is why I share the analysis of those who argue to engage in the path of the enforceability of the right to housing. This action would guarantee every citizen despairing of obtaining decent housing, then it has resources and undertook all necessary administrative steps, the possibility of bringing justice to the responsibility of the authorities in charge.

Such a constraint is required to trigger necessary awareness. So, this horizon must be preceded by a period of complete reorientation of our housing policy.

We must first make the popular assumption the property a national priority. Today, five French ten only are owners of their homes, against seven out of 10 average European and nine out of ten in Spain. This forms should be corrected. By creating the "House at 100,000 euros" and the French Association for the home ownership, I wanted to show that it was possible to get out of the logic of the "all HLM" advocated by Socialists. To allow the middle classes who work to become owners for the price of rent is an ambition which corresponds to a deep aspiration of the French.

At the same time, we must also simplify the maquis of procedures and the players in the sector of housing by replacing the existing with a single tool to make the most effective public action. I wish therefore to the creation of a national housing agency. This public service created on the grouping of existing tools would be placed under the tutelage of a single Minister any centralizing the jurisdiction housing and city planning. This agency would that be clearly identified the head support. It would be also a central point for access to social housing, putting an end to the obstacle course in which is lost and is exasperating that seeks to accommodate social Park. The establishment of a unique record of housing demand could be one of the first tasks assigned to this new instance.

The Agency could still manage the aid measures to the stone or the renovation of old housing and provide owners donors, as a guarantee fund, protections to secure the payment of rents or to remove such sureties of entry. This new public service should play a role of intermediary between the State and local communities in relying on a policy of compulsory contracting promoting construction everywhere where it is necessary and ensuring compliance with the obligations regarding the allocation of territorial social housing efforts.

After five or seven years of efforts to restore the supply of housing as proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, the right against the housing could be introduced into our legislation. And the French could then decide on parts of the effectiveness of the policy. Allow each French to host worthily his family under one roof is for the public community a moral obligation and necessity without which social cohesion can be consolidated. This double ambition today requires a revolution in our practices to transform into real right which today is still a virtual right for millions of families.