One quarter of residents in the French capital live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive plan to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city.

The two-bedroom penthouse comes with sweeping views of the Eiffel Tower and just about every other monument across the Paris skyline. The rent, at 600 euros a month, is a steal.

Marine Vallery-Radot, 51, the apartment’s tenant, said she cried when she got the call last summer that hers was among 253 lower-income families chosen for a spot in the l’Îlot Saint-Germain, a new public-housing complex a short walk from the Musée d’Orsay, the National Assembly and Napoleon’s tomb.

“We were very lucky to get this place,” said Ms. Vallery-Radot, a single mother who lives here with her 12-year-old son, as she gazed out of bedroom windows overlooking the Latin Quarter. “This is what I see when I wake up.”

  • filister@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    8 months ago

    To be over tourism is plaguing a lot of European cities right now.

    The original idea of Airbnb was great, to be able to rent out a room from your home or the whole home while you were away, but it slowly turned up part of the problem why rents have increased so dramatically recently.

    This combined with the lack of public housing, and sky rocketing building materials made real estates the most profitable investment over time for a lot of people and unfortunately I don’t see an end in sight.