Administrative forms in shambles, a monster file to assemble, waiting lists of several thousand names which grow longer from month to month, passages in committee as expected as feared … The demand for social housing often looks like , to a long way of the cross. “The treatment is totally dehumanized today, the system is seized, judge Nacera Bouaza, co-founder of Live and Inhabit. We must reinvent the social housing market! ”
From her offices, located at the entrance to the village district, in Sarcelles (Val-d’Oise), the young 32-year-old entrepreneur tries to give, she says, a “kick in the anthill”. After moving to the town planning department of the city of Sarcelles, where she grew up, then having managed the land affairs of a large public company, she decided to set up her company, “Live and Live”, there is just a year and a half.
For those who cannot claim either social or private housing
With a specific objective, to seek out the “invisible”, those who are neither eligible for social housing, nor able to find accommodation in the private park. Without being informed that they can benefit from intermediate accommodation. “There are so many! These young lawyers, the liberal professions or craftsmen who do not have the 1% employers …, she says. All these people are under the radar! However, landlords sometimes find it difficult to rent their property. Some apartments remain vacant for several months! ”
Nacera thus wishes to “fluidify the market” for social and intermediate housing, by tying up the files before handing them over, turnkey, to social landlords in Ile-de-France. Alongside the behemoths such as CDC Habitat, Action Logement or Immobilière 3 F, the young company is digging its way, with more than 500 housing applicants already taken care of.
Support for each of the applicants
“We are not in competition with them. We are experimenting with partnerships with some, they have understood the interest of noting their presence ”, underlines the founder. It highlights the “methodology” for supporting applicants that it has put in place. More human, she believes, than the administrative procedures developed today.
“We receive them for at least an hour and a half, in the presence of a social worker or a lawyer, if necessary. We get to know them. In traditional structures, you submit a file and you are just a number. This leads to errors in the allocation of housing, she says. Many families, after having obtained an apartment, reapply a few months later because it does not suit them… ”
Four years without news from social landlords …
Without promising her clients to obtain social housing in record time, given the tension in the market, Nacera Bouaza believes that, working “in depth” with the files, the chances of obtaining a tailor-made apartment rapidly increase. This was the case for Marta, 28, now installed in a new T3 in Versailles (Yvelines).
Receptionist and mother of a child, the young woman filed, in 2015, a file with the town hall of Créteil (Val-de-Marne), to obtain social housing with her companion, a handler. “I went four years without news, she breathes. And, in November 2019, the proposal I got did not meet my criteria… ”
Desperate, Marta then turns to “Live and Live”, which she learned “by word of mouth”. “There, I was received, I was able to explain precisely what I wanted. Really, the reception was very encouraging, she says. I didn’t just drop a file at the counter! ” After ten days, Nacera sends him a housing offer. His file was not retained in committee.
