As France's yearly ban on evictions during the winter comes to an end, housing advocates are denouncing the lack of solutions for those who cannot pay rent, pointing to the record number of evictions in 2024.
Starting Tuesday, 1 April, landlords can once again restart eviction proceedings against tenants who have not paid their rent, as the end of the yearly "truce" on evictions over the winter came to an end on Monday.
Last year, the National chamber of bailiffs recorded 171,000 legal proceedings for unpaid rent, an 11 percent increase from the year before.
Of those proceedings, 24,000 households were evicted, according to the Fondation pour le logement des défavorisés (the Foundation for the unfairly housed – formerly the Abbé Pierre Foundation), a 25 percent increase from the 19,000 in 2023.
And that number has doubled in 10 years.
Dramatic consequences
"Never in 50 years have so many tenants been threatened with eviction as the winter truce nears its end, nor have there been so many public housing (HLM) applications (2.6 million), so many inadequately housed people (4.2 million), nor so many homeless people (350,000)," the L’Association Droit Au Logement (DAL) (Right to Housing) platform said in a statement in February, calling for demonstrations against evictions at the end of March.
A study by the Foundation for the unfairly housed found that a third of people who are evicted are left without permanent housing, and they are forced to live with family or friends, in hotels or sleep in their cars.
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"This lifestyle has dramatic consequences for their professional and personal lives, their physical and mental health, their children's schooling and their social ties," the study concluded.
The winter truce, which went into effect on 1 November, also applied to electricity, gas and water providers who are not allowed to cut services because of unpaid bills.
The Foundation said that inflation and a rise in energy costs meant that a record 1.2 million households saw their electricity cut in 2024.
(with AFP)
