The City of Paris has set itself a target of 40% “public housing”including 30% social housing and 10% intermediate housing, by 2035, it announced on Sunday 6 November. “Our goal is to ensure that those who work in Paris have the opportunity to live there”, declared on franceinfo the housing assistant of the capital Ian Brossat. He believes that this objective will go through “the purchase of a certain number of buildings”.
franceinfo: Is your objective to prevent the exodus of Parisians, because of the excessively high housing prices in the capital?
Ian Brossat: Our goal is simple. It is to ensure that those who work in Paris and those who produce wealth in this city have the possibility of living there. Paris has progressed a lot in recent years since we have almost reached 25% of social housing, that is to say that today there is one inhabitant in four who is protected from real estate speculation. That said, the problem we have is that private housing is still too expensive. Home ownership is too expensive. It is too expensive to rent and that is why we now want to go further.
How are you going to do it? Will the town hall buy housing from individuals, developers, in order to rent them later at more affordable rates?
This objective of 40% public housing in Paris by 2035 will of course require the purchase of a certain number of buildings. I am thinking of office buildings, I am thinking of aerial garage buildings. I am also thinking of hotels, which are sometimes obsolete, to transform them into affordable accommodation. We must ensure that any surface built in Paris helps with housing policy and facilitates the housing conditions of Parisians, precisely in order to keep the middle and working classes within the city.
The opposition is already attacking you on the city’s debt, which is almost eight billion euros at the end of 2022. How are you going to do financially?
You know, you have to see what you want. Do we want to make Paris a city that would be a citadel reserved for the privileged, or do we want to make Paris a city that allows those who run it to simply live there? We make that choice. Of course, that has a cost. We have also, in recent years, chosen to make housing the first investment budget of the City of Paris. And if we hadn’t, there would be lots of Parisians who couldn’t continue to live in this city. Paris, each year, is a budget of 500 million euros to develop affordable housing. It is therefore a political choice. Other cities around the world have made the same choice, such as the city of Vienna. It is indeed the choice that we make and that we carry with pride.