'The whole economy of the department is threatened by the lack of accommodations', said Jean-René Garnier, the Alpes-Maritimes Prefect, during the assessment 2000 of the real estate Observatory.
The Alpes-Maritimes Prefect has been very clear, on Tuesday evening, during the meeting of the real estate Observatory at the CERAM in Sophia Antipolis. In front of five hundred to six hundred real estate professionals from the French Riviera, he gave a shout of alarm after the statement of figures revealing the accommodation crisis intensity that the Alpes-Maritimes are living through today.
Accommodation crisis and lack of labour force
'The whole economy of the department is threatened', he declared. 'If a manager wants to make somebody from elsewhere come here, he just can't put him up any more. At the moment, many people are complaining about the lack of labour force. In hostelry particularly. But how can we solve this problem, if it is not possible to accommodate employees. How will companies of Sophia Antipolis be able to recruit foreign top executives who are needed to face an international market, if they can't offer these executives accommodations that they frequently find at home.'
'We must have social accommodations, normal accommodations and even top-of-the-range ones in order to be able to accommodate American executives for instance. Some companies won't be able to develop any more because of this accommodation problem. Even not to mention the business real estate problem : at the moment, the stock of available offices in the department is half inferior to the demand !'
'The risk ? The first one is to see high technology companies leaving for the Var, on Sophia Esterel or even for Marseilles where there are possibilities to accommodate working people. It is difficult to talk about lack of labour force without mentioning the accommodation problem.
'We carry on to the social division'
The other effect of the current block is the strengthening of the social division. If people who are in a little three-room flat don't move from there because they can't find something else; if those who are in a two-room flat do the same way; what can people who have nothing can do ? The social elevator is out of order. In this department we are carrying on to the social division. We absolutely have to put the accommodation level and what goes with it right.'
At the beginning of the session, the Alpes-Maritimes Prefect has had a strong reaction to a word of the president of the public building and the works sector, Paul di Natale about 'the lack of rubbish dump' which justifies, among other factors, an increase of the construction price. And Jean-René Garnier said : 'The point is not the lack of rubbish dump, but the lack of prevision. For years, the attention has been turned to this problem of wastes. We have to keep in mind that the one which produces wastes (the building companies for these inert wastes in this case) is in charge of evacuating them.'
What solutions ?
'Thus, today's customers are paying for what yesterday's customers didn't pay. The problem is that they are not the same customershas concluded the Prefect who has criticized the 'local particularities' : The County of Nice, that's great. But it doesn't exist since 1860 !'
Well. It has to be said. But now, concretely, what can we do for the accommodation ? Open the POS in cities ? To keep in check environment protection associations as everybody at the session asked for ? To adapt the Besson law to the Alpes-Maritimes specific conditions which are close to those of Paris regarding rental prices ? To set up other measures ? The recording of crisis is disturbing, but what is even more disturbing is the lack of clearly identified solutions...