French town offers free marriage counselling to save money on housing

A French mayor is offering free couples and family therapy to residents in an attempt to help them stay together and reduce the financial burden of single-parent social housing.

Municipal authorities in Viroflay in the Yvelines department outside Paris say the service has helped cut the number of single-parent families requiring council housing by 10 per cent.

Viroflay, which has a population 16,000, was struggling to find social housing for residents due to high demand from single-parent families and the fact that only 18 per cent of homes were council-run, below the 25 per cent mandatory minimum in France.

“We realised that 50 per cent of social housing applicants were single-parent families and that 50 per cent of our welfare budget was being distributed to single-parent families,” said Laure Cottin, deputy mayor of Viroflay, responsible for early childhood, family and social affairs.

“The state offers support when it comes to separation but not when it comes to prevention of such separations.”

In a novel bid to tackle the problem, she decided to offer free marriage and family guidance counselling.

The practice operates out of an “unusually small” office on the ground floor of the town hall to make it more “intimate”, according to therapist Emmanuelle Leprince-Ringuet.

The town hall is convinced it has borne fruit given the drop in separations. While it admits there is no direct proven link, single-parent families now account for 40 per cent of applications for social housing in Viroflay, compared to 50 per cent when the service opened in 2017.

‘We would have probably split up without it’

Couple Marine and Adrien told France Inter their marriage would have been on the rocks without it.

“[We] had been through a tsunami and we needed outside help. [The therapist] has helped us to find solutions on our own, and that’s very important,” Marine told France Inter radio.

However, “financially, [the therapy] would have been very complicated, and we probably would have given up pretty quickly,” she said, adding that they would probably have split up by now without it.

Ms Cottin, deputy mayor, said she hoped French authorities in other towns would follow suit.

“Some 425,000 people separate every year in France. This has a psychological impact, of course, but also a social, environmental, and economic one. For the French government, it’s an issue that needs to be taken into account in public policy,” she insisted.

Ms Leprince-Ringuet said, however, that pressure on cutting the social housing budget didn’t mean she was under orders to keep couples together at all costs.

“I’m neither a matchmaker nor a divorce facilitator. I have couples who come to me to patch things up and others who come to split for good. When it’s over, they go their own way, she said.