France : housing, a right for all

Housing homeless people in tents alongside the Canal Saint Martin in Paris and inviting ordinary citizens to sleep rough for a night under the media spotlight in last december has forced the French government to respond by a radical change of policy towards the homeless. With France entering a pre-election period, politicians of quite all stripes have prompted to vow urgent action for tackling the problem for housing. An enforceable right to housing will soon be adopted, but its implementation will certainly take more than two years to be effective. In the meantime, the Social Cohesion minister, Jean-Louis Borloo recently outlined plans to offer new shelters to homeless people, more tuned to their particular needs, especially in terms of hours opening. The housing crisis in France has become a very hot issue with the years, and the construction of subsidised units is not meeting yet the raising demand. Some three millions of people are facing difficulties to find a standard housing, in particular, in urban settings. And architects are thinking about a further building densification to resolve the problem while complying with the sustainability constraints for energy and space …