Alumnus profile: Raphaël Bonet

After a bachelor’s degree at Sciences Po, including a third year at University College London, Raphaël Bonet joined the first class of our dual Master’s in Comparative Urban Governance with the Colegio de México. Raphaël graduated at the end of 2020 and is now working to secure housing for people fleeing the war in Ukraine.

What is your current job?

I’ve been regional coordinator at SOLIHA Ile-de-France for a little over a year. I work with the Ile-de-France branches of the Solidaires pour l’Habitat (SOLIHA) movement, supporting them in the regional partnerships and schemes we run to promote access to and retention in housing. First, in the area of renovation support, which encompasses support for both energy improvements and home adaptations for the elderly and people with disabilities. And second, in the area of housing: we help rehouse families as part of projects to combat substandard housing; we manage construction or renovation projects to produce very low-rent social housing; and we provide rental management services for the families that we support through rental intermediation. The language is technical, but more simply put, we assist people in planning their renovation or adaptation project by helping them work out what their technical needs are and get the financial aid they are entitled to; and we help our public-sector partners to provide better access to housing for people who are poorly housed or without housing.

What do you like most about your job?

Regional coordination in the non-profit sector is a hybrid position that involves a mix of operational monitoring and institutional prospecting, and working with and for organisations that you don’t formally belong to. It sometimes feels like you’re torn between two parties, but it’s precisely that ambiguity that makes the job wide-ranging and rich, and gives me a comprehensive and cross-cutting view of a complex world like the non-profit sector.

Over its 80 years of existence, SOLIHA has specialised in the complex, multi-faceted domain of private housing, which historically fell outside the scope of public policy but is now an essential element of urban planning and development strategies. I don’t only meet housing stakeholders. I also like the variety of tasks, skills and interdependencies that I get to see, and which social action and the notion of social service of general interest are built on in a very practical way. This richness means that one day I’ll be helping people return home after a hospitalisation, and the next I’ll be involved in finding housing for people who have fled the war in Ukraine. As providers of social services of general interest, the SOLIHA non-profit organisations and the non-profit sector as a whole operate as a laboratory for social action.

What are the main issues at stake in your work at SOLIHA?

Given my still limited experience, I don’t have a firm opinion on that yet, but I would say that coordinating means starting with what exists, accepting what exists, and trying to adapt to new scenarios.

In the case of hosting Ukrainian refugees, or rather those affected by the war in Ukraine, the challenge is to understand how rental intermediation, which is primarily a response to the problems that our region’s vulnerable families face in accessing public and private housing, can serve as a useful tool for housing families who do not have the same needs, resources or background. More specifically, this entails defining, putting into practice and readapting a tried-and-tested tool, with a group of stakeholders who aren’t necessarily used to it: new operators, landlords from outside the usual framework of solidarity renting, etc. Then, based on the limitations we observe, new avenues can be explored.

What is the current situation after more than eight months of conflict?

As we all know, the conflict has dragged on since the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February and it’s impossible to anticipate the end of the war and the circumstances in which it will unfold. But there has been massive material damage and Ukraine’s reconstruction will take a long time, so much so that Olaf Schölz has already called for a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild the country.

France is not the leading host country for people fleeing the war and so far we have only taken in 105,000 people, compared to nearly 1.4 million people in Poland, 1 million in Germany and 430,000 in the Czech Republic. That’s barely 3% of the European effort, which puts us in sixth place behind Spain and Italy. Nonetheless, it is true that the people taken in are liable to stay for an indefinite period, which means that we need to think about their linguistic, occupational, and social integration... and particularly about their housing.

In what context was this scheme set up? What measures has the government taken so far?

When the first refugees began to arrive, the government started by opening collective accommodation facilities while appealing to the solidarity of citizens. A platform listing offers of accommodation was set up, and a large proportion of the refugees are currently being hosted in private homes. It is thanks to this spontaneous mobilisation that war-affected people have been able to stay in our country since March. Unfortunately, this type of accommodation is difficult to sustain over the long term. Financial aid is being arranged to help hosts who have taken in families for more than three months, but the people being hosted need to regain their independence if they are to make progress with integrating. So the risk now is “dehosting” and the return of some families to accommodation facilities, whereas the number of beds is going to be reduced by the end of the year.

The Ile-de-France region is largely overstretched; it centralises most of the arrivals, while its housing stock is more in demand and more expensive. It was decided to deal with this problem by sending those who did not yet have medical, educational or professional ties that required them to remain in the region to other departments, but according to the National Assembly, the “decongestion” measures implemented in the spring by the DGEF (General Directorate for Foreigners in France) only managed to transfer 5,000 people out of Ile-de-France. Besides, it was necessary in any case to offer housing to all those who have to and want to stay in the Ile-de-France departments.

Rental intermediation (intermédiation locative or IML), which is based on using an approved third party to rent the property on behalf of the family and to provide social support, was set up to cover the second stage of hosting, i.e. providing sustainable, longer-term solutions. The use of a non-profit intermediary that rents private housing directly makes it possible to offer independent housing to families who would not be able to access the private rental market on their own, while also providing social support for accessing entitlements, learning French, finding a job, etc.

How does the scheme work? Where did the idea for it come from?

Despite the multitude of stakeholders, the way IML Ukraine works is quite simple as it’s basically a matter of matching housing supply and demand. On the demand side, there are ‘hub’ operators who keep track of all the people who are currently hosted in private homes or collective accommodation, as well as identifying new arrivals. If there is a risk of dehosting because relations get complicated, or if the collective facilities reach saturation point, people are referred to the scheme. On the supply side, SOLIHA first identifies housing offers from private or institutional landlords, then checks the decency and safety of the accommodation and passes it on to the managing charity, which will sign the lease with the landlord and provide support for the household. Cité Caritas, Equalis, Croix Rouge and Emmaüs are among a dozen charities with IML approval that are mandated locally by the DRIHL (Regional and Interdepartmental Directorate of Housing) or the DDETS (Departmental Directorates for Work, Employment and Solidarity) to rent the accommodation from the landlords and support the households.

As regards the origins of the scheme, the ministerial directive in March [defining the provisions for taking in Ukrainian refugees] immediately identified the recourse to approved third parties because it had proved its worth throughout the country since it was developed in the 1990s. The experiences of SOLIBAIL and Louer Solidaire have been particularly fruitful in our region, and they have secured more than 8,000 housing units for young people or families who have left hotel or temporary accommodation facilities, or who are on pathways to integration.

In line with the work that the DRIHL and AFFIL (Ile de France Association for the Promotion of Inclusion through Housing) have been doing for several years, it also seemed essential to us to combine interventions within the private housing market with “interim” housing interventions, which consist in optimising the life span of buildings used for residential purposes that have been totally or partially emptied, for example before a major renovation operation. Politically, it is not possible in Ile-de-France to favour the hosting of some to the detriment of the rights and expectations of others, hence the need to find new solutions of this type.

What difficulties have you come up against? What solutions are being considered?

At present, we have been able to secure almost 300 housing units, and more than 100 families have moved in or are in the process of moving in—which is not enough to meet the need, but still satisfactory.

The problem, however, is related to the reality of the rental market in Ile-de-France, and to the difficulty of securing private housing. As we are hosting 40% of the refugees who have arrived in France, together with the other overstretched region, the PACA region, we need to rekindle the wave of solidarity and find new offers. To do this, we need to raise awareness among Ile-de-France landlords—just as the rental market is tightening following the entry into force of the Climate and Resilience Act, and the Ukrainian crisis is generating less enthusiasm—but also among institutional partners and social housing providers who are in a position to draw on their stock. The need is simple: self-contained, independent housing units, available for at least eight months and located in Ile-de-France.

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