The boxes of medication pile up on her bedside table. For weeks, Léa (name changed) has been sleeping “only 2.5 hours per night.” “The doctor just prescribed me the next level up,” sighs the thirty-year-old. Long nights of insomnia that began in June when she had barely 48 hours to leave the apartment she owns just steps away from rue Oberkampf in Paris (11th arrondissement). The cause: a risk of collapse in this privately owned building that prompted the municipality to issue an “emergency safety order.” All residents had to leave immediately. Since then, the initial consolidation work has been completed. But there is still a lot of construction work to be done to permanently secure the various buildings in this condominium. “We are told that if everything goes well, we will be able to return home by mid-2025,” Léa whispers. “But I think we should rather count on 2026.”
Where will she live until then? This question obsesses her, as she works in real estate. “I am homeless,” she says. “I am currently staying with friends, but they will be leaving at the end of the month. And I cannot afford to rent something elsewhere.” Her finances are already in the red, with a loan she took out in 2020 to buy her 30-square-meter apartment and the 50,000 euros she will likely have to spend to finance the condominium’s repairs.
A year earlier, another building on rue Séverin (5th arrondissement) in the heart of the Latin Quarter had to be evacuated in the middle of the night. Residents who feared that part of the staircase would collapse had alerted the firefighters. The bill there also increased to nearly 9 million euros. And the apartments remain desperately empty.
“The old suburban buildings” in the crosshairs
In both cases, the difficulties accumulated over the years with postponed repairs, often contentious situations, and sometimes negligent property management. “The deterioration of buildings is really a spiral that sets in over time, with a cumulative deterioration that eventually has serious consequences,” analyzes Stéphanie Jankel, director of housing studies at the Parisian Planning Workshop (Atelier parisien d’urbanisme, Apur).
But the City of Paris wants to reassure: these situations that lead to evictions are “exceptional.” The last procedure of this kind dates back more than six years. However, it is impossible not to think of the buildings that suddenly collapsed in the city centers of Marseille in 2018 and Lille in 2022.
Especially since one figure catches attention in the capital: “81% of privately owned residential buildings are over 100 years old,” according to data from Apur. “This requires extra vigilance, especially for old suburban buildings of poor quality,” admits Ian Brossat, deputy to the mayor of Paris in charge of housing. “But we have all the tools to prevent the disasters that unfortunately still occur in other cities.”
A list of high-risk addresses established
Among these tools are the reports that residents can make to the housing technical service to report various types of malfunctions. Between 4,000 and 6,000 are received each year. “And all of them are processed, without exception,” assures Ian Brossat.
In addition to this, an observatory was created in 2008 to detect buildings “that may be deteriorating.” Every year, Apur combines about ten indicators such as unpaid collective water bills, firefighting interventions, termite presence, or the percentage of small rental housing units in the building.
Based on this data, a list of potentially high-risk addresses is compiled. “It is a modest approach that does not allow us to see everything or prevent accidents,” says Stéphanie Jankel. “But it is an additional tool to assist the housing technical service, which is responsible for managing and monitoring the private sector’s housing stock.”
The agents of this service then visit the addresses they are not yet familiar with to see if there is a need to take initial actions. In the latest report published in July, Apur identified 264 buildings for the year 2022, which is 0.5% of the 49,000 privately owned residential buildings in the capital.
“This is not a snapshot of the degradation of Parisian buildings but really for prevention,” insists Alice Veyrié, deputy director of housing. “A good portion is already on our radar. Among the others, only about twenty on average generally lead to procedures after a visit.”
In its 2022 study, Apur listed 148 buildings for the year 2021, a number significantly lower than the 264 identified the following year. This difference is explained, among other factors, by the addition of new criteria. “We try to find new criteria every year,” explains Alice Veyrié. “The challenge now is to detect isolated buildings that could be deteriorated.”
Because the scale has changed in Paris over the past twenty years. “Mass slum housing that affected entire neighborhoods has disappeared,” says the official. This is the result of a large-scale plan launched in 2001 by Bertrand Delanoë, who had just taken the reins of city hall. Until 2018, 2,150 buildings were addressed, equivalent to 56,000 housing units. Among the most degraded, 450 buildings were bought by the City and converted into social housing. “There is undeniably improvement,” says Ian Brossat. “We must remember that at that time, there were extensive slum areas, particularly in the 18th arrondissement.”
Even today, three-quarters of the buildings identified by Apur are located in this district, where many low-income households are concentrated. “The fight against substandard housing is not over, it is a daily battle,” admits Ian Brossat. “But we have changed our paradigm. We have moved from a policy of treating squalor to a policy of prevention.”
“It’s not on the same scale as Marseille”
At the heart of this fight, the Soreqa, a local public development company, is commissioned by the City of Paris to help property owners who encounter difficulties in carrying out necessary repairs. This includes financial assistance from the National Housing Agency and the City of Paris, which can cover more than half of the costs.
“Our other strategy is public ownership,” explains Sylvie Froissart, director of Soreqa. “When we see that owners are completely negligent, as in the case of slumlords, we can buy the entire building, which will then be taken over and completely rehabilitated by a social landlord. In this case, all residents have the right to relocation.”
Eighty condominiums are currently being supported in Paris, and 56 buildings are in the process of being reclaimed by the public. “In Marseille, they have 4,000 to deal with,” compares Nathalie Maquoi, the president of this operator. “In Paris, we are no longer on the same scale at all. Besides, most of our activity is now in Seine-Saint-Denis, which still faces entire blocks of substandard housing.”
In the capital, single rooms are now in focus. These are homes where situations of substandard housing are often identified. Soreqa is currently working on buying some of these rooms to transform them into social housing.
