The “Zero Long‑Term Unemployment Territories” project is a brilliant initiative proposed by the association ATD‑Quart Monde to make effective the right to obtain employment, a principle stated in the preamble of the 1946 Constitution. This associative initiative is based on three intuitions: no one is unemployable, money is not what is lacking, and work is not what is missing. The idea is therefore to create jobs through Employment‑Oriented Enterprises (EBE), which hire — on a voluntary basis — long‑term unemployed people on permanent contracts, at minimum wage and with chosen working hours, to carry out locally useful work that is not done because it is considered insufficiently profitable for the traditional market.
How can these jobs be financed? By reallocating the costs and lost revenue linked to long‑term unemployment. France spends at least 43 billion euros per year, or 18,000 euros annually per person who is durably unemployed. With that money, isn’t it better to offer a job than unemployment benefits?
Poor housing is another unresolved social problem in France. Seven out of ten French people say it has become difficult to find housing in their municipality, according to an Odoxa poll published on November 18. A recent article in Le Mondenoted that in twenty years, housing prices excluding inflation have risen by 88%, while the average salary has increased by only 13%. Yet this issue remains absent from the political debate.
A municipal initiative is changing the situation: the 20th arrondissement of Paris is launching this month the sale of two buildings, each with around fifty housing units, at less than 5,000 euros per square meter — nearly half the market price. How is this miracle possible? By separating ownership of the land, which remains public (belonging to the “Foncière de la Ville de Paris”), from ownership of the buildings, which is acquired for 99 years by the buyer. In Paris, more than 1,000 BRS housing units are now in development. And this new national system of home ownership is rapidly expanding, as it meets a real need.
Here are two examples of concrete, non‑utopian solutions to two major social problems — long‑term unemployment and the housing crisis — that poison our society and fuel the vote for the Rassemblement National. Successive governments have been unable to imagine them. They are the result of local initiatives born from field analysis: cooperative approaches make the difference.
Dominique Bénard
