A compromise proposed by the government in terms of budget savings has been approved by the HLM world, announced Wednesday its confederation.

The HLM has approved a compromise proposed by the government in terms of budget savings, which will be smaller than initially expected in the coming years, announced Wednesday its confederation.

"The ambition of the agreement that we have obtained is to give visibility to the HLM organizations," said in a statement Jean-Louis Dumont, president of the Social Union for Housing (USH), after a committee executive having accepted the government's proposals. He had proposed in mid-April to lighten the bill of the HLM world, which is asked for significant savings since the beginning of the five-year Emmanuel Macron.

950 million euros a year by 2022

They mainly pass through an organized reduction of rents to compensate for a fall in housing subsidies (APL) paid to tenants. This measure, introduced gradually, was to take full effect from 2020 with 1.5 billion euros in annual savings. It will finally be 950 million euros per year by 2022.

The reduction in rents itself is lowered to 1.3 billion. At the same time, the contribution of the organizations to the National Stone Fund (FNAP), a public institution contributing to the maintenance of the social housing stock, will be drastically reduced by 300 million. The difference will be offset by Action Logement, a joint body between companies and unions. In addition, there are 50 million euros in rebates by the Caisse des dépôts, the state's financial arm and the main contributor to social housing.

"We were obviously in favor of signing"

The agreement "is not worth accepting" the organized reduction of rents, always seen as "unfair", warned Dumont, also demanding a complete return to a preferential rate of VAT on the work. The latter, raised for two years to 10% by the executive, will partially return to 5.5%, its original level, but it will affect only some work, including those on the most social housing.

"We were obviously in favor of signing," welcomed Valérie Fournier, president of the sub-federation of housing social enterprises (ESH), private share of HLM. "I'm not saying it's the best news, but 950 million euros is absorbable," she said. "It was not sustainable to go beyond." Valérie Fournier also regretted the approach adopted by a documentary on the HLM, broadcast the night before on France 2, citing cases of corruption for the allocation of social housing and accusing a lessor, Vilogia, of "real estate speculation ". "We take a small fact that we present as a generality or a system, without any counterpoint on reality," she said.