There will be no cancellation of rent in Bobigny. The measure, voted by the previous majority in the midst of the coronavirus crisis and then deemed illegal by the prefecture, will be definitively abandoned by the new team, announces the mayor, Abdel Sadi (PCF). “We are burying this electoral masquerade announced with a great deal of communication by our predecessors, a few weeks before the second round”, tackles the new councilor, winner, on June 28, with 55.28% of the vote ahead of Christian Bartholmé, head of the list of the outgoing majority UDI.
This measure was presented as a “first in France”. On April 23, the city of Bobigny, then ruled by a UDI majority in difficulty after the first round of municipal elections, pledged to cancel all April rents for the 4,000 tenants of its public office for the habitat (OPH). Official objective, to make the cost of the health and social crisis less unbearable for disadvantaged households in the city, some of which have lost their jobs or part of their income.
“Everyone was against it, starting with the OPH”
Total cost of the measure: € 1.3 million, partly financed by an exceptional subsidy voted during the last municipal council.
Except that the municipality had come up against the OPH itself, then with the prefecture, which estimated, on June 26th, that “this measure undermined the principle of equal access to the public service and would therefore be illegal ”, according to a letter written by the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, Georges-François Leclerc, addressed to the former municipality. And, it is therefore now official, the new municipal team will not put such a measure on the table.
“Everyone was against, starting with the OPH which we knew was in great financial difficulty, that it would not have the means to finance a measure which, in addition to being electoral, was also inapplicable and unequal! Because among the tenants concerned, some are very precarious, but others do not have to worry about paying their rent ”, further develops Abdel Sadi. Who puts on a layer: “It’s simple: the UDI saw itself dumped in the first round of municipal elections, they took out of their hats a measure which said: We shave for free ! »
When defending this idea, Christian Bartholmé justified this cancellation of rents by the cataclysm of the Covid-19 crisis. “In three months, the OPH has lost the equivalent of a month’s rent,” he said in mid-May. The urgency is there! “
“We all knew, deep down, that it was absolutely impossible for the city to hold onto”
And he defended himself from any electoralism: “In all town halls, even in those where elected officials won in the first round, the teams made exceptional decisions to help their inhabitants during this epidemic. So yes, some will say that we could have refined the device so that it only benefits those who really need it. But if the OPH had had to sift through 4,000 tenant files, nothing would have been done before December! But people need help now. “
On the side of the inhabitants, the decision of the new municipality is not a surprise. “We all knew, deep down, that it was absolutely impossible to hold for the city and especially for the OPH, and that some elected officials did it to strum voices in the neighborhoods”, thunders Ammar Mandja, representative of the ‘Association of tenants from the Salvador-Allende and Chemin-Vert housing estates, owned by the social landlord.
