Traveling to Marseille, Emmanuel Macron split a strong announcement. According to the President of the Republic, it is necessary to “be able to expropriate the slum merchants much more easily and in a more punitive way”. The head of state spoke near a degraded condominium in Marseille, promising a change in the law which “protects too much” co-owners accumulating debts.
“The degraded condominium” is “one of our priorities”, insisted the Head of State in the second city of France, particularly affected by the housing crisis, where he comes to launch Act II of his Marseille plan in large . “It’s really a national cause that we seize,” said Emmanuel Macron.
We will “take provisions in law to further help all those who live” in degraded private condominiums, “accelerate emergency work”, he announced. It is necessary “to be able to expropriate much more easily […] the bad payers” of condominium fees, because “that is the key”, further detailed the president, after having offered a long walkabout with the inhabitants. of the East Marseille residence, more commonly known as Cité Benza.
With 40,000 slums and 8 people dead in the collapse of two unsanitary buildings in the city center in November 2018, rue d’Aubagne, Marseille is particularly affected by the housing crisis.
This large complex of faded pink buildings with very damaged iron shutters, where around a thousand inhabitants live, has 1.3 million debts and has been placed under administration since the end of 2017.
In private residences like these, “you have slum landlords, owners who don’t pay the utilities and, gradually, a debt accumulates, the commons deteriorate, the elevators are not repaired, the roofs do not are not repaired, the facades are falling apart and gradually, year after year, the situation is slipping,” described the Head of State, referring to “situations of distress, sometimes despair, extremely important” created by “less than one third of the owners”. “You have to be able to isolate them, make those you can pay and then expropriate much more easily and in a more punitive way the slum landlords and those who have placed the entire condominium in this situation,” he said. for follow-up.
The President concluded this new three-day visit – the second in less than two years, a record in his diary – to the port of Marseille-Fos, one of the largest in the country, now chaired by his former Minister of the Interior and macronist from the start, Christophe Castaner. While the mayor of Marseille denounces “a state within a state”, Emmanuel Macron called on the port to “take a turn” by being “much more ambitious” to open up to the city as well as to the Rhône and the Saône and “as far as Bavaria”, while developing its industrial activities.
For this, there is a need for energy, the equivalent of four EPRs according to the president, who called for “looking, in consultation, if the whole of this economic basin is ready to welcome nuclear units”. “It’s a land that has a vocation in this area, and in particular because we also know that we have a huge subject of cooling the power stations, and the power stations to come will have to be much closer to the sea” .