Squatters INVADE French holiday homes in bid to force British expats to SELL UP AND GO
SQUATTERS who say they cannot afford local rents have moved into holiday homes in Brittany, with activists saying they will force second-homeowners to sell their properties in a summer of “spectacular actions”.
Campaigners from a Breton group named Dispac’h, meaning “revolution”, have plastered posters and stickers on expats’ holiday homes this week reading: “Brittany is not a second home. Villages in ruins, the youth in exile.”
The group has promised to launch a campaign of civil disobedience.
Britons are the second largest nationality after the French to own properties in the northwestern region of France, where about 14 percent of properties are second homes.
In 2017, 879 foreigners bought second homes at an average price of €119,500 in the region.
Related articles
Villages, emptied of their life for more than half of the year, are seeing public services disappear.
Belgians and Germans followed Britons as the largest homeowners in the area.
Ewan Thébaud, of Dispac’h, said: “As a group we don’t squat second homes but if young people want to do it, that’s fine as far as we are concerned.”
John Wellman, a 69-year-old Briton who owns a second home in the centre of Brittany, said: “It would be a shame if this campaign turned into anything unpleasant, because everyone has always been very friendly towards us until now.
“The Brits bring a lot of things to Brittany and we really like the place because it has its own character.
“It’s like Cornwall with better food.”
But Parisians have a worse reputation in the region than the British, according to Mr Wellman, who said activists want Brittany to be independent from France and put a stop to outsiders buying more houses and flats.
And young Bretons who say they cannot pay for local rents squat in the expats’ homes, including a property which had been empty for ten years owned by a Briton near Carhaix-Plouguer, Mr Wellman added.
Last year, an article on pro-Breton website NHU Bretagne, said expats’ homes were “eating into our territory”.
The article added: “The Irish, the Dutch and the English are numerous.”
A Dispac’h spokesman said: “Villages, emptied of their life for more than half of the year, are seeing public services disappear.
“The concentration of visitors during a short period requires the construction of ever more infrastructure which covers the coasts in concrete.”
Meanwhile, the mayor of Carnac on Brittany’s south coast, Olivier Lepick, said: “Locals are very happy to sell their house to Parisians for a high price but then complain about not being able to house themselves.
“We all agree that we should lower the proportion [of second-homeowners] but you have to admit that they contribute significantly to the economic wellbeing of the town.
“Who spends €50,000 on a new kitchen, giving work to local builders? Wanting them to leave or taxing them would be tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot.”
