Will the anti-squat law protect landlords by criminalizing the most precarious?

“Better protecting smallholders”this is the main rationale behind the law for the protection of housing against illegal occupation, voted in early December 2022, which you have surely heard under the name of anti-squat law.

Brought by the Renaissance deputy Guillaume Kasbarian, it wants to tighten the already existing sanctions against squatters. The illegal occupation of a house could therefore be punished with three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros, against one year’s imprisonment and a fine of the current 15,000 euros.

The anti-squat law not only affects so-called squats, but also targets tenants, and more precisely bad payers. Guillaume Kasbarian therefore intends, according to his terms, to restore the trust of landlords in tenants, since the law also provides for a “automatic termination clause” which would allow the landlord to terminate the lease in the event of non-payment.

Dangerous criminalization, say critics of the anti-squat law

Critics of the law were expressed by several Nupes deputies, such as François Piquemal who denounced a “criminalization of all the poorly housed”. It is also a “social and democratic regression” which worries the MP Aurélien Taché, for whom this text “those who intend to fight against “abusive” include in this definition all those who occupy a property without right or title, including public buildings, but also tenants who, in good or bad faith, have unpaid rent. »

These too associations that fight against housing problems who have come forward. For Marie Rothan, head of the fight against social disenfranchisement at the Abbé Pierre Foundation, it is an invoice “scandalous” :

“Families are struggling to make ends meet with rising inflation, with rising energy costs and we are pushing them even further instead of helping them find a solution, saying ‘will you be unpaid rent? even more, we will make a very short procedure, we will break down all the prevention devices and in addition you could go to prison”. »

For Jean-Baptiste Eyraud, spokesman for the Right to Housing association on LCP extensionthe aberration of this text lies particularly in criminalize empty squatters : “However, according to INSEE, we have 3.1 million vacant homes. »

Does “small landlord” really exist?

In 2021, 170 eviction requests were submitted to the prefecture by landlords whose accommodation was occupied. All in all, that’s pretty little. The question therefore arises of being faced, ultimately, with a rather minority phenomenon.

Other data on housing and the distribution of landlords and tenants is illuminating. According to INSEE statistics collected in 2021, a quarter of families (24%) are multi-owners and 3.5% of families own half of the rental units. A real estate concentration that only reinforces inequalities in access to housing. “This study has made it possible to get out of the image of the small French owner. Obviously there is, but in reality ownership is extremely concentrated at the top of the distribution of wealth” explained to France News Pierre Madec, OFCE economist.

An observation that undermines the arguments of the defenders of the anti-squat law.

Added to this is the frequent media coverage of squat cases with a constant and Manichean narrative, that of poor landlords plundered in front of undesirables who occupy their property and who abuse a legislation that is necessarily too lax and permissive.

Adopted in November in first reading, the anti-squat law will have to pass the Senate floor where it will be debated on January 31, 2023.

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