Divide and multiply: the new slums mushrooming in the Paris suburbs
A recent report published by the Greater Paris regional council shows that every year some 2,000 lodgings are created from the division of hundreds of small suburban houses, converted by often unscrupulous landlords into several tiny living spaces where families live cheek by jowl for exorbitant rents. But, as Michaël Hajdenberg reports, local authorities are mostly impotent to deal with a racket, the consequence of a heightening housing crisis, which is earning slumlords a small fortune.
AsAs the growing economic crisis heightened an already serious housing crisis in France in 2009, Mediapart published a report on how unscrupulous landlords were making a small fortune by carving up small houses in low-income suburbs of Paris into tiny separate lodgings, rented out for exorbitant sums to families living cheek by jowl in cheaply-converted spaces, including cellars.
