Buying up dilapidated or poorly insulated buildings: the Paris city council's solution for creating social housing

On a busy shopping street in the 11th arrondissement, a six-story building has half its windows bricked up. Inside the long, narrow courtyard, the new mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, strolls about, observing the walls blackened with grime and damp, and the cracked plaster crumbling away.

Of the 41 apartments spread across the different buildings, only five are still inhabited by tenants who have "seen all the colors" with the previous owners, testifies caretaker Ana Bela.

The building has not undergone any renovations for decades, apart from the street-facing facade. Broken windows in a stairwell have been patched up with cardboard, the apartments are "as they were" or even propped up with supports, and the tenants are used to "making do" according to the caretaker, who has been there since 1986, when she was just a child.

The building dates from 1800 and is part of the "old buildings" of Paris that the City "is trying to protect", argues Mr. Grégoire.

"Questionable practices"

The aim is to renovate everything to create 44 social housing units and 1.000 m³ of shops and business premises on the ground floor. The operation has been entrusted to the Parisian public housing authority RIVP, which is receiving a subsidy of 6 million euros from the city council, out of the 20 million euros the project will cost.

The town hall exercised its right of pre-emption to buy in 2025 this building which had already been "under surveillance for some time" due to "questionable practices of a property dealer", including "the eviction of tenants", explains Mr. Grégoire.

By 2025, a total of 1.200 housing units had been acquired by the City of Paris and its social housing providers, partly through pre-emption rights, but mostly through negotiated sales. These acquisitions have tripled in two years, "because we are building much less, so we are acquiring more and renovating more," explains Jacques Baudrier, the Communist deputy mayor in charge of housing.

In total, 3.900 social housing units were created in Paris last year, sometimes by converting offices or parking lots, using a budget of 600 million euros.

"Money wasted" according to opposition member Grégory Canal, co-president of Rachida Dati's Paris Liberté group, who does not want to "support social housing, but rather homeownership for Parisians".

According to him, pre-emption contributes to "atrophying the private real estate market and confining working-class households to certain neighborhoods" and should be "limited to very specific cases, such as the protection" of old buildings.

Works costing "100.000 euros"

"We position ourselves to buy back when there is a public interest in regaining control, when tenants are under pressure or when there is a lack of maintenance," argues Anne Hidalgo's successor.

During Tuesday's extraordinary Paris Council meeting, Emmanuel Grégoire will vote on the creation of a "housing protection brigade" to combat unsanitary housing and fraud.

"We are buying up a large number of vacant properties or properties that will soon be vacant," adds Mr. Baudrier. Because with the gradual ban on renting the most energy-inefficient properties, older buildings are in need of extensive renovations, and more and more building owners are turning to the town hall to sell their properties, lacking the funds to renovate them.

"There are many owners who inherit buildings from the 19th or 20th century" and who cannot finance work that can reach "100.000 euros per dwelling or even more", explains the socialist Emmanuel Grégoire.

"Today we are in high demand" to buy back properties, reports Daniel Schneider, director of construction at RIVP, who in January acquired a seven-story building in the 18th arrondissement, which until now had been well maintained but which the three heirs did not wish to keep.

The social landlord has allocated one million euros to renovate the 17 apartments, more than half of which are classified as F in the energy performance diagnosis.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.