Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, the French people’s favorite village in 2019, says stop

The sea air caresses the faces of passers-by obsessed by the sand-coloured stone buildings. Diners sit at tables and enjoy their oysters in the morning murmur. Summer is in full swing in Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue (Manche), one of the jewels of the Normandy coast. The town of 1,700 inhabitants owes its reputation to the television show The favorite village of the Frenchs, presented by Stéphane Bern, a competition she won in 2019. Since then, it has been an El Dorado for tourists and vacationers who crowd its streets during the few summer months. “Come back on October 1st! Once the holidays are over, the city becomes the land of closed shutters,” grumbles a Saint-Vaastais at the counter of the bartabac Le Mouillage.

Inaccessible housing

In Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, 50% of homes are second homes. The symbolic threshold was reached last year. This phenomenon is stifling the lives of locals. Overpriced housing, residents fleeing, schools closing… the consequences are multiple. “Our college is on the department’s blacklist. Apart from a few students, it will close,” worries the non-partisan mayor Gilbert Doucet, who is fighting against this prospect. A reality that is far from limited to this small town in the Cotentin. Since the 2010s, in France, the number of second homes has increased faster than the total housing stock (3.3 million in total, one in ten homes, a European record*). A desire for the wealthiest households to combine work in the city with rest in the countryside, which has increased since the Covid-19 pandemic. The coastline is particularly affected. And in several hundred municipalities, the rate of temporary holiday accommodation exceeds 70%: Carnac (Morbihan), Deauville (Calvados), Eaux-Bonnes (Pyrénées-Atlantiques)…

Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue is heading straight down that path. In ten years, the town has lost 500 inhabitants. “We need to limit the haemorrhage,” says the mayor, whose family has been there for ten generations. Faced with the influx of holidaymakers, the modest fishing village is unable to house its residents. “We don’t even get young workers or locals anymore. They know it’s beyond their means,” admits real estate agent Romain Pestel. In his agency’s window, apartment listings reached 400,000 or 500,000 euros; one house barely exceeds a million euros. His clients are from Paris, Rouen, Caen and even Belgium. He himself, aged 38 and in a relationship, would dream of buying such properties… but he can’t. This situation exasperates the people of Saint-Vaast: “You have to be a shipowner or win the lottery,” they complain at the port café.

Strong decision by the mayor

So, to revitalize his community and ensure that young people no longer leave, Mayor Gilbert Doucet decided to take a strong approach. Five building plots for first-time buyers were put up for sale on July 15 at knockdown prices: between €50 and €70 per square meter, half the price of the traditional market. The counterpart? Strict allocation conditions: one of the members of the household must work in the village or surrounding area, one or more children must be in school there, the house must be built within two years and the young couple agrees not to sell it for ten years, unless they separate. The mayor assures that he has received more applications than places available. A commission will be held in September, other plots could then be used for the same purpose if the operation proves conclusive.

“It’s a good decision. Second homes are killing our community!” says Véronique. Behind the cash register of her seafood grocery store, the manager looks grim when she looks at her annual accounts: 200 customers per day in the summer, around twenty in the winter. Like the violent gusts in Normandy, this instability has swept away many neighboring shops. Due to a lack of customers, but also due to a lack of employees to support them, and a lack of affordable housing. A vicious circle.

Not everyone is so pessimistic. “We shouldn’t hit second home owners too hard! We allow craftsmen to live by often renovating our houses that need work,” retorts Christian, a sixty-year-old who lives between the Channel in the summer and the Eure in the winter, where his main property is located. However, this is not the trend that is emerging. Following the example of his Breton neighbours, Gilbert Doucet plans to impose a surcharge on second homes by 2025. The last line of defence, according to him, to prevent Saint-Vaast from becoming a ghost town eight months of the year.

*Data on data.gouv.fr