NGOs call for building 400,000 homes per year... while limiting urban sprawl

400,000 new housing units would need to be built per year, including 150,000 social housing units, to address the poor housing crisis in France (compared to 373,000 and 82,000, respectively, in 2023). But how can this frenzy of construction be reconciled with limiting urban sprawl? In a report published this Tuesday, March 19, the Abbé Pierre and pour la Nature et l'Homme foundations propose several avenues to public authorities.

The “zero net artificialization” (ZAN) objective, enshrined in the law, obliges France to halve, every ten years, the rate of erosion of natural spaces by the city, and to have stopped the phenomenon in 2050. The artificialization of land, which has deleterious effects on biodiversity, the environment and the climate, is due almost two thirds to the construction of housing, which takes up more space in France than elsewhere due to a model of land use planning that favored individual houses.

This model could also have worsened poor housing, note the foundations, many houses in subdivisions having been built at low cost, with consequences on their quality and their insulation, and therefore on the finances of their occupants. The authors also highlight the cost of this model for communities, with urban sprawl leading to significant needs for roads and electricity, gas and water networks, which are expensive to build and maintain.

To reconcile this construction objective with land sobriety, it will be necessary to increase density, by building more housing per hectare in residential areas, by raising existing buildings or by developing “light” housing, note the authors of the report. , and for this, communities will need increased funding.

For new construction, it will be necessary to give greater priority to collective housing (buildings), which consume less space, in particular social housing, affirm the two NGOs, who recommend increasing the financing of HLM.

They are also calling for strengthening rent controls and regulating land prices, while fighting against vacant housing or land retention with significant tax increases. They also suggest measures to reduce the share of second homes in the housing stock, and to limit the phenomenon of furnished tourist accommodation.