INVESTIGATION. Red alert on housing in Brittany: how to get out of it?

“The issue of housing difficulties in Brittany has never been so intense. Whatever the territories and the theme, the trends seem unfavorable even though our region was often cited as an example for its ability to offer housing for all! » In the annual report of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, the observation of Stéphane Martin, director of the Brittany agency, is edifying. Based on this observation, the writing of West France carried out the investigation to understand the reasons for these difficulties.

Initially, our journalists wanted to give a voice to what we call “housing castaways”. Often an obstacle to taking a job, bosses do not hesitate to build housing estates to keep and above all attract new employees. But if the company cannot help new arrivals, employees, families or even retirees sometimes turn to camping, as is the case in Morbihan. A more than temporary solution to deal with the lack of land and above all to avoid paying exorbitant rents.

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Unable to become owners, some households cannot leave their social housing. However, there is a problem, since the demands for a place in public housing have never been so strong. A traffic jam forms and you have to spend many months before finding yourself in your social housing. If the equation seems impossible to solve, there are certain solutions such as real and joint lease. Alice and her companion experienced this.

Students on the front line

Particularly affected by this housing crisis in Brittany, students are faced with a situation considered “critical”. If the Crous (Regional Center for University and School Works) plans to build 1,500 new housing units in Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) and as many in Brest (Finistère), the project promises to be long and should extend over ten years . Taking this parameter into account, certain cities and social landlords are renovating and rehabilitating vacant housing to accommodate student shared accommodation. When this possibility is not available to them, other students try to find solutions on their own and make the intergenerational link work.

Read also: “In Brittany, there are four requests for student accommodation,” notes the director of Crous

With its Climate and Resilience law, the State wishes to accelerate energy renovation, therefore, the most energy-intensive housing (classified E, F and G), i.e. 200,000 rental properties, will be gradually excluded from the Breton rental market by to 2034. A large-scale thermal renovation project which faces excessive constraints and costs.

The question of secondary housing

Read also: “People need accommodation all year round”: this Breton owner refuses Airbnb

If the housing market is so tense in Brittany, the boom in tourist rentals is no stranger to this. Indeed, rather than renovating energy-intensive accommodation, some owners do not hesitate to offer their furnished accommodation to tourists. Thus, Airbnb and Booking platforms are prominent in Brittany and are leading to an increase in second homes. Particularly angry, the residents present all year round do not hesitate to make it known. If some are content to demonstrate, others go further and tag the facades of certain homes. Enough to raise concerns about these “identity reflexes. »

When we can no longer find accommodation, should we invent one? Faced with a shortage of year-round rentals, accessible building land and social housing which now affects the middle class and calls for rapid responses, Breton decision-makers are pleading with one voice for the State to concede to Brittany the possibility of experimenting with housing. Houses that can be assembled in 24 hours, containers, wooden houses, tiny houses… some seem to have found solutions to counter this crisis.