Squatters have taken up residency in a vacant office block in Paris and also set up a 200-tent camp along Canal Saint Martin in the city.
The office where the squatters are, near the Paris stock exchange, has been given the nickname of the "ministry for the housing crisis".
Housing activist groups say about a million people in France are homeless, and of these 100,000 are sleeping on the streets.
From the end of 2008, the right to housing will apply to homeless people, impoverished workers and single mothers, according to the new government plan.
All those people living in slums will benefit from the same right from the beginning of 2012, Mr de Villepin said.
120,000 new homes are being built every year up to 2012 and the new legislation is aiming to put housing in the same legal category as education and health in French law.
