Aurélien, a young engineer aged 26, employed, has been looking for accommodation in La Teste, and even beyond in the Arcachon basin, for more than a year. He first wanted to buy, but couldn’t find anything at reasonable prices. He cites the example of a T2…
Aurélien, a young engineer aged 26, employed, has been looking for accommodation in La Teste, and even beyond in the Arcachon basin, for more than a year. He first wanted to buy, but couldn’t find anything at reasonable prices. He cites the example of a 45 m T2² at 230,000 euros. Impossible for him to borrow such a sum from the banks, especially with current rates. He then turned to renting but without success: “When you accumulate the costs of renting accommodation, it almost amounts to buying. And then I’m sometimes asked to pay two to three months’ rent in advance,” he explains.
Aurélien is one case among hundreds of other people looking for accommodation in La Teste-de-Buch and the surrounding communities. The difficulties are always the same: the cost and scarcity of goods on the market. And the problem has gotten worse in recent years. In the city, nearly 1,200 applications for social housing are pending and fewer than 200 are allocated on average each year.
Build and regulate
Mayor Patrick Davet has made it one of the main axes of his policy. “I receive requests every day. I want to be able to accommodate the young people and the Testerins. It’s not possible to see them leave,” he keeps repeating. The problem also affects employers who cannot find staff. Faced with this, there are only two levers for the municipality.
The first is to build. The City has launched a program of 600 new housing units including 350 social. The other is the regulation of seasonal rentals (Airbnb type) to put year-round rentals back on the market. There are 1,759 furnished tourist accommodations in La Teste. This policy is carried out by the intercommunal union (Siba) on the scale of the Arcachon basin. All rental companies will have to register this year. Once a precise inventory has been carried out in December, each municipality will be able to take measures next year. We don’t know them for La Teste. But Patrick Davet has already declared: “We can understand the use of Airbnb for people wishing to increase their pensions or resources. The fight we want to wage is against those who make a business out of it.