“Angry tenants”: a demonstration in Paris in defense of the right to housing

‘Angry tenants, we’re not going to let this go’: Some 350 people demonstrated Saturday afternoon in Paris to denounce rental evictions, as well as a bill that risks speeding them up. “Roof = law” or “street is death, housing is life,” we might read on the slogans of the demonstrators who gathered in Place de la Bastille the day after the end of the winter holidays, synonymous with the resumption of the eviction procedure from the rent.

“We condemn the return of evictions, power outages and demand rent reductions and rent cuts that drive residents out of the social sector,” Jean-Baptiste Ayrault, a spokesman for the Right to Housing Association (DAL), told AFP.

“Hunting the Poor”

In a press release from Generation. s (Nupes) demanded “to ban eviction without alternative housing for a year”: “We will not tolerate an increase in the number of homeless people.”

The demonstrators also protested against a bill by Macronist MP Guillaume Kasbarian, which is currently on its second reading in the National Assembly. He plans to tighten fines for squatters and speed up procedures for non-payment of rent.

For Eddie Jacquemart, president of the National Housing Confederation, this is “social decline.” “This law will criminalize tenants, it will promote the hunt for the poor, organized by Emmanuel Macron,” he condemned. Then the Parisian demonstrators rushed to the Ministry of Housing. In the procession, Farida (a false name) came to protest against the eviction, as well as against unsanitary housing, like hers.

Meetings in the Basque Country in particular

“It’s hell not to have decent housing, it exhausts me mentally and physically,” she testified to AFP. She has been waiting for social housing for several years. “I’m not asking for the moon, you need to have a bit of humanity.”

A dozen rallies and demonstrations took place on Saturday in France in different cities such as Lille (North), Montpellier (Hérault), at the call of unions and associations in defense of the right to housing.

Some 3,500 people, according to organizers and police, took to the streets of Bayonne (Pyrenees-Atlantiques) this Saturday to denounce the “harmful consequences” of the property market, which has become inaccessible to the inhabitants of the Basque Country. In ten years, the population increased by 9.6%, with a significant parallel increase in the number of second homes and seasonal rentals.

3,000 newcomers settle here every year, mostly on the coastal strip and its surroundings, and the price per m2 has increased by more than 35% in four years, with peaks from 8,000 to 10,000 euros per m2 in cities such as Biarritz or St. Petersburg . Jean de Luz.