Paris city authorities are attempting to wrest back control of thousands of council-owned homes, many of them in the French capital’s most exclusive areas, that have been let for decades at below market rents to wealthy and well-connected tenants.
Some of the apartments were reportedly given to politicians, their family members and friends more than 30 years ago by the city’s then centre-right mayors.
With property prices and rents rising to beyond the reach of ordinary Parisians, the Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is determined to free up more council housing.
As well as a pledge to build more council homes, an audit has been carried out of 39,000 properties, owned and maintained by City Hall, known as “free rent” housing and outside official control.
Officials say it is impossible to establish exact figures but they believe up to 30% of the homes are occupied by tenants with incomes that disqualify them for local authority housing.
Ian Brossat, city deputy mayor in charge of housing, told the Guardian: “This is a bizarre situation where these properties are not technically part of the social housing stock. We have applied to get back 3,400 of them this year and we will continue until all 39,000 are under our control. We are targeting those in the more chic areas of Paris because that is where we believe there is the most abuse.
“We are determined about this. It is not a witch-hunt but we have to make the occupation of these properties more moral.”
Having signed open-ended rental agreements, the tenants have a legal – if not moral – right to occupy their council homes. However, Paris officials say there is a minority abusing the system, pointing out that before 2001, when Hidalgo’s predecessor, Bertrand Delanoë, was elected mayor, the allocation of social housing was “opaque”. Many sought-after apartments were given to politicians, VIPs and their children.
Among those cited as not being eligible for council housing is retired banker Jérôme Chodron, brother-in-law of former president and Paris mayor Jacques Chirac, who occupies a spacious apartment in the expensive fourth arrondissement for what Le Parisien described as a derisory rent.
Virginie Merle, better known as Frigide Barjot, founder of the anti-same-sex marriage movement La Manif pour tous (Demos for all), was recently forced to leave her 173m2 flat with a terrace near the Eiffel Tower, which was reportedly allocated to her because her husband was a speechwriter for the leader of the country’s centre-right political party.
Brossat said the current city administration was trying to put right the questionable practices of the past.
“We have 170,000 people seeking social housing and the greater the need, the greater the need for exemplary behaviour. We cannot allow this situation to continue,” Brossat said.
A former housing official during Chirac’s tenure as mayor of Paris between 1977 and 1995 said social housing became a property portfolio for friends.
“The best apartments in the centre and west of Paris were reserved in the mayor’s office,” the unnamed former official told Le Parisien. “The big thing was when the buildings were under construction and people came to choose their apartment from the plans.”
Centre-right critics accused the city authorities of “chasing the middle classes from Paris”. Philippe Goujon, UMP mayor of the chic 15th arrondissement, said: “It’s not realistic … it’s a political manoeuvre.”
Goujon added: “The Socialists didn’t miss out on being housed by the city and neither did the Communists and those from the Front de Gauche.”
Jean-Baptiste Ayraud, head of Droit au Logement (Right to Housing) agreed, saying some tenants thought they were untouchable.
“The fact is they can become millionaires and continue to live in a home built out of public money when there are already 140,000 people in Paris needing council houses who are suffering.”
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