In France, all rented accommodation must respect criteria of decency.

Clearly, it must be safe, healthy, offer a minimum living space and be equipped with the usual comfort equipment.

Nevertheless, the Abbé-Pierre Foundation estimates that there are nearly 600,000 unworthy dwellings in France.

It is to prevent such slums from ending up on the rental market that the Alur law of 2014 created a framework tool: the rental permit.

Local initiatives

This device is a tool given to municipalities to regulate rental rights in their territory. Thus, cities can require owners to first go through an administrative process before being able to rent their property. To do this, the municipal council or the EPCI (the public establishment of inter-municipal cooperation) must define an application scope consisting of geographical sectors - the entire municipality or certain districts - or even categories of housing or of real estate complexes affected by the measure.

Streets and neighborhoods with a large share of dilapidated housing are targeted.

On the rest of the national territory, owners can still freely rent their property.

However, before publishing your ad, it is better to check with the town hall if the accommodation is not located in one of these sectors.

Declaration or authorization

This rental permit can take two forms, at the free choice of local elected officials.

It can be first of all a simple declaration of rental mentioning the identity of the lessor, the designation of the property and the date of the rental contract.

The corresponding form (Cerfa n ° 15651) must be sent to the town hall or to the EPCI within fifteen days of the conclusion of the lease, at each change of tenant.

Otherwise, the city can put in place a prior rental authorization, which is also necessary for each change of tenant. Once the specific form (Cerfa n ° 15652) has been sent and the receipt obtained, the lessor must then wait for the response from the town hall, which has one month to render its decision. In the meantime, the hygiene services will travel to check the condition of the accommodation on site. And if the municipality considers that the dwelling "is likely to endanger the safety of the occupants and public health", it can refuse the rental or subject it to a condition of work. And beware of offenders. A fine of 5,000 euros maximum is foreseen for donors not respecting the obligation of prior declaration, while it can reach 15.000 euros in the event of non-compliance with the authorization procedure.

A device that spreads

More and more municipalities are using this tool.

It is already used in several cities of Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-d'Oise but also in Gennevilliers, Clichy, Niort or Châteaurenard.

The rental permit is also compulsory in 22 municipalities of the Lille metropolis, including Roubaix and Tourcoing, since spring 2019. The same year, Marseille also decided to apply this measure in the Noailles district, site of the terrible collapses of buildings from the previous year in rue d'Aubagne.

Still in the South, Montauban requires you to make a prior rental request for all properties located in the heart of the city.

For its part, the metropolis of Bordeaux intends to experiment with this device from 2022.

As for the experience feedback, it is rather positive, even if it is necessarily done on a small scale.

In Narbonne, 347 dwellings were inspected by the hygiene services between 2019 and 2020 thanks to this device, knowing that 13 were refused and 217 obtained authorization with reservations, so that work could be undertaken.

Another example, in Cazouls-lès-Béziers (Hérault), 185 homes were inspected in 2018, knowing that 79 only obtained the necessary authorization after making the required improvements.

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