Marseille struggles with unacceptable housing 5 years after Oban Street tragedy, no comment from me.

Five years after two buildings collapsed in the center of Marseille and killed eight people, the fight against unfit housing is making slow progress due to the lack of social housing and gentrification of the city center.

There is a scaffolding of scaffolding and boarded-up windows, and there are cracks in the facade and metal beams holding up the first floor.

Five years after the collapse of two buildings on Oban Street and the deaths of eight people on Nov. 5, 2018, a walk through the downtown area gives a glimpse of a crumbling city, the consequences of decades of inaction.

The problems didn't arise after the Rue d'Aubagne tragedy, the warnings did too. Already in 2015, the Nicolas report warned of potentially unfit private housing,''posing a risk to the health or safety of 100,000 residents of Marseille.

After November 5, 2018, panic set in and danger markers were smashed everywhere in the neighborhoods of Nouai, Belsans or Belle de Mae. In two weeks, almost 300 families were evacuated. The difficult problem of resettlement arose. Of the 71 families evacuated from Rue d'Aubagne, only 8 were still living in temporary housing in September 2023.

Mariam Abdul, 46, lived in the Bougainville neighborhood and was one of the first evacuees. After five years of wandering, she had just signed a permanent lease. On the morning of November 13, 2018, she contacted the city's hygiene service after seeing footage from Oban Street. She was concerned: the floor in her house was sloping, the door wouldn't close, and there were cracks on the walls: 'They evacuated''us in a hurry. I had to wait in front of the house for the kids who were coming back from school. I just took their notebooks, everything else was left inside. "

The single mother and her seven children lived in a hotel. They stayed there for five months. Then they were moved to a temporary apartment for a year and then another. It wasn't until October 2023 that Mariam and her family moved into a permanent apartment. Today, she can barely believe it: "I can't imagine. I've been living on one leg for five years," she whispers.

No one has returned to the small house in Bougainville. Behind the boarded-up windows, everything has been left behind: closets, clothes, forks.... This is not a special case. The geographer Elisabeth Dorier, a research lecturer at Aix-Marseille University, estimates that evacuations and relocations have affected about 8,000 people since 2018. This is often''concerns poor, elderly and isolated residents, as well as single parents, adds Kauter Ben Mohammed, the well-known president of the Angry Marseille association and a candidate in the last parliamentary elections. She has been following the case of Mariam Abdul, as have hundreds of others.

The researcher Elisabeth Dorier laments the lack of consultation by civil society: "Associations are no longer invited to the technical controls provided for in the resettlement charter signed by the city." Her map shows the danger zones in the city center as well as in the areas adjacent to''s seaport, Félix Pia, Bougainville, Aigalade, Belle-de-Maye ... Together with Belle-de-Maye and Nouai, these fairly central areas are among the poorest in France.

What changes have taken place in the last five years? In 2019, a partnership project was signed between the city, the state and the Aix-Marseille metropolitan area for beautification, including the rehabilitation of demolished buildings and the elimination of unfit housing. The City of Marseille is also receiving €650 million in financial support from the State as part of the "Marseille on a large scale" program, notably for the renovation or construction of more than 5,000 social housing units. This project is particularly important. In Marseille, there are currently 45,000 people waiting for social housing, which contributes to the development''Tower reconstruction in Felix Pya: "They say they are going to evacuate 500 residents, but they don't ask their opinion. Where will they be put? They will end up in Savina (District 15) because there is no social housing in the center. "

This problem is particularly acute because Marseille has attracted a lot of attention since the Covid-19 crisis. Long replaced by the upper classes who favored Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Rennes and Montpellier, the focal city's focus has been getting a strong boost since the pandemic. Old real estate prices have risen by about 30% in three years. In response to this new attraction and the risk of gentrification of the center pushing out the poorest, the mayor's office is increasingly regulating the market, imposing restrictions on tourist accommodation, especially''affected in the city center, sets quotas for social housing in buildings and possibly introduce rent regulation by 2024.

Another major challenge is to stick to marginalized sellers of lethal sleeping pills and owners of blighted housing. The municipality believes that the current legislation is not enough, so Mayor Benoit Payan wants to propose a law that would allow conviction and better identification of sellers of lethal sleeping pills. Fortunately, the authorities are being helped by justice, which has recently handed down several favorable verdicts. In September, the seller of lethal sleeping pills Didi Mordechai was arrested. A middleman for 16 companies operating multiple hotels and unfit housing in''s Belsuns neighborhood, he stole several million euros in public funds to repair buildings. In October, those responsible for the Rue d'Aubagne collapses were also indicted, including Marseille's housing fund, expert Richard Carta - who declared the buildings dangerous without requesting their immediate evacuation - and Julien Roy, then responsible for risk prevention in the city of Marseille. Apart from these extreme cases, "most owners of unfit dwellings are not sellers of lethal sleeping pills, but careless, absent-minded or selfish small owners", recalls researcher Elisabeth Dorier. This is a reminder of the scale of the problem facing the authorities in Marseille. It will take more than five more years to ward off the specter of the street''Oban.