We might add to this the right of foreigners to vote in local elections. The institutional context is favourable to this: the scheduled completion of the inter-communal map by June 1st 2013, and the election, as the law requires, of inter-communal councillors in the framework of local elections by direct universal suffrage, bring a little more legitimacy to the inter-communal authorities. The aim is to encourage the emergence of genuine authorities responsible for organizing housing. It is important to clarify the roles of the State and local authorities, to re-establish a coherent relationship between the responsibilities conferred on these authorities and the powers they enjoy, so that these responsibilities may be assumed and actually are in practice. For decentralized organizing authoritiesĪn act III of the decentralization process is indispensable to “ford the stream”. The need for public services, that is, for a collective organisation in the service of a common good, has never been more pressing: it calls for a response that is both national and decentralized. Finally, the inevitable contradictions between the twin aims of housing rights and social diversity are becoming more and more jarring: they can only be addressed in a democratic framework at the level of the housing district. Moreover, the housing crisis is deepening (with difficult access to housing, growing burdens on low-income households, and ever-widening social and cross-generational inequalities). This encourages the creation of large private social housing groups which are bound to want to break away from local policies, and might even demand to shake off the constraints of social housing. The State has reduced to nil its participation in the form of subsidies while appearing to want to regulate everything, at the risk of inciting some local authorities to back out in their turn. Moreover, the advances made are now under threat.
Others, however, are lagging behind, even within stringent market areas, and no single consensus has been reached on the specific situation of the Paris Region (Ile de France). They carry out detailed studies of territories, tailor their housing policies to the planning policies and to the elaboration of urban planning documents covering the entire area of housing provision, set up assistance scheme adapted to local needs, enter into local partnerships, etc. This reform has taken the process to a new level, and many local authorities have reached a new “maturity level”. In 2004, with act II of the decentralization process, the inter-communal structures resulting from the Chevènement law, and the departments as well, were granted authority to control building subsidies (social housing programmes and subsidies for private housing). Over the past 30 years therefore a policy has taken shape which is sometimes defined as « deconcentralisation » : a parallel trend towards deconcentration and State contractualization with local authorities, principally inter-communal structures. As a result, Local housing Plans (PLH), first implemented in 1983 and spurred on by inter-communal structures, are increasing in number, and the State has given some leeway to its deconcentrated services and allows them to contractualize financial arrangements based on the PLH.
However, increasingly contrasted trends on local housing markets, and the initiatives of pioneering local representatives (Rennes, Nancy), soon led to a “territorialization” of local housing policies. It was prompted by both economic reasons (the State was reluctant to relinquish an important lever of regulation) and political ones (social housing is an instrument of national solidarity). Concerning housing, a decision was made, during act I of the decentralization process in 1982, to not decentralize.
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