Olivier Klein, minister in battle to make housing exist

June 3, 2023

A child of working-class neighborhoods, the minister responsible for housing Olivier Klein strives with difficulty to make his area of ??expertise exist, a potential “social bomb” in the eyes of Bercy and the Elysée.

On Monday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne will announce measures resulting from the consultations of the National Council for Refoundation (CNR) dedicated to housing.

But associations to employers’ organizations, which have worked for months on these proposals, the hope of having answers to the height of the housing crisis is tenuous.

Because eleven months after entering the government, Olivier Klein, Minister Delegate for the City and Housing, is struggling to influence the doctrine of the Elysée and Bercy who often see housing as a burden on public spending.

As part of the CNR Housing, he himself was to announce at the beginning of May the measures he was adopting… but the meeting was postponed for a month at the request of Matignon, who then took control of the announcements.

Meanwhile, the executive has prepared the ground for further budget cuts, as developers and builders warn of an unprecedented crisis.

Emmanuel Macron castigated, in terms of housing, a “system of public overspending for collective inefficiency”, while the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal warned that housing would be particularly in demand to save money in the budget. 2024.

Olivier Klein took it without flinching.

“Convictions, he has some, but I have the impression that he is overwhelmed. He cannot manage to give impetus, to win arbitrations”, regrets Senator LR Dominique Estrosi-Sassone, a fine connoisseur of policies housing.

All the interlocutors of this 56-year-old former physics-chemistry teacher, round glasses and three-day beard, salute his competence and his social fiber.

Before becoming a minister, he headed the National Agency for Urban Renewal (Anru), a powerful instrument of urban policy, and was mayor of one of the poorest towns in France, Clichy-sous-Bois ( Seine-Saint-Denis), which he helped to open up.

Since his arrival at the Hôtel de Roquelaure, the headquarters of the ministry, he has been repeating his formula over and over again: “that housing is not the social bomb of tomorrow”.

“For us, the Minister of Housing, and even more Olivier Klein because of his career, is an ally,” said AFP Pascal Brice, president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors, which brings together associations to help homeless people.

But the associations hold rigor with this man of left, passed by the PCF then the PS, for not having prevented the adoption of the law anti-squatters carried by the deputy of the majority Guillaume Kasbarian.

It is above all the Senate and the Prime Minister who weighed in to withdraw the most controversial provisions, creak several actors involved.

On each file, “we have the impression that we have to push, push ourselves to make it move”, laments Pascal Brice.

“We can be useful from the inside”, retorts Olivier Klein.

He has indeed obtained some victories, such as the maintenance of places in emergency accommodation that the government intended to close, or a revaluation of housing aid (APL) which had suffered under the first five-year term of Emmanuel Macron.

But impatience is mounting in the face of other projects that are falling behind schedule.

Thus the “Housing first 2” plan to give a roof to the most vulnerable, the negotiation of city contracts for priority neighborhoods and the signing of a “trust pact” with social landlords.

Or even negotiations with banks to make access to credit more flexible, such as the regulation of Airbnb-type tourist accommodation.

In October, he announced that the gradual ban on renting energy-intensive accommodation would also apply to furnished tourist accommodation, filling a worrying void. Seven months later, the measure has not yet been started.

“For me, it’s not a question of person”, evacuates Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé Pierre Foundation and co-host of the CNR Logement. “The standoff between the Ministers of Housing and Bercy is often enormous, and the balance of power is often unfavorable to the Ministers of Housing”.