Pierre Liscia is a regional councilor for Île-de-France and author of
"La Shame" (Albin Michel, 2019) on the situation in the city of Paris.
Crowned with its reputation as the most beautiful city in the world, Paris has always attracted all those who had dreams of emancipation and success in their heads.
Yes, but now, Paris no longer attracts.
In less than 10 years, the city has lost 123,000 inhabitants, equivalent to the population of the four central districts.
At the head of this exodus, families and the middle classes for whom the quality of life has deteriorated considerably.
Pollution, dirt, high prices, chronic insecurity, crack, traffic jams, ghettoized neighborhoods and the general disfigurement of public space have become real foils.
Paris accumulates sad records: it's today
today the only metropolis to lose inhabitants where all the other major cities in France are experiencing renewed attractiveness;
it is the only department of Île-de-France to lose inhabitants where all the other departments welcome more and more newcomers each year, in the inner suburbs as well as in the outer suburbs;
finally, it is the only urban department in France where dozens of schools are closed for lack of students.
Paris has seen the number of pupils in nursery and primary schools drop by 20%, i.e. 27,500 fewer pupils.
is finally the only urban department of France where one closes schools by tens, faults of pupil.
Paris has seen the number of pupils in nursery and primary schools drop by 20%, i.e. 27,500 fewer pupils.
is finally the only urban department of France where one closes schools by tens, faults of pupil.
Paris has seen the number of pupils in nursery and primary schools drop by 20%, i.e. 27,500 fewer pupils.
The city has been losing inhabitants for a decade but no one has noticed an improvement in the quality of life… quite the contrary!
Pierre Liscia
A very worrying trend that should sound the death knell for more than two decades of erratic and ideological management of the City by a municipal team that is out of breath and without ambition.
However, far from alarming the mayor, Anne Hidalgo even goes so far as to rejoice in this "dedensification" of Paris, forgetting that she has so far always defended the dense city as a model of an ecological city.
“A necessity so that we can live better in Paris”
, she specifies without shame.
A statement that struggles to convince, and for good reason: the city has been losing inhabitants for a decade but no one has noticed an improvement in the quality of life… quite the contrary!.
Read alsoParis could fall below the two million inhabitants mark between 2050 and 2060
Rather than engage in an exercise in self-criticism which could prove overwhelming for her, Anne Hidalgo prefers to attribute the responsibility for this demographic haemorrhage solely to the surge in real estate prices, denouncing the still insufficient number of social housing in the capital.
With 25% social housing and more than one in three Parisians living in social housing, the City of Paris is far from lacking in this regard.
Impervious to all criticism and totally unable to admit that Parisians can leave a deteriorated, concrete, congested, ugly city, strewn with waste, infested with rats and badly managed by a wasteful and wasteful majority, the mayor persists and announces that it wants to increase the share of social housing to 40%
"to allow middle-class, hard-working people to be able to return to settle in Paris"
.
Squandering hundreds of millions of euros to buy private apartments at high prices, the City does not create any new housing but on the contrary participates in the scarcity of supply, which precipitates the real estate market and rents in an inflationary spiral.
Pierre Liscia
If the response to Parisians' lack of love for their capital was truly linked to the number of social housing units in the capital, the Parisian population should have been rising steadily since 2001. In nearly two decades, the social housing stock has indeed increased by more than 50 %.
However, the equation is reversed: the more Paris has social housing in Paris, the more it loses inhabitants.
Despite the 450 million euros devoted each year to social housing and a stratospheric municipal debt approaching 10 billion euros (against one billion in 2001), the net creation of housing remains limited as the land available in Paris is so rare.
To achieve her disproportionate goal of reaching 40% social housing, Anne Hidalgo is forced to excessively overdensify the city:
concreting of the last wastelands and plots available, real estate development projects on breathing spaces such as the Ménilmontant and Championnet stadiums or the Bercy-Charenton ZAC, operations to raise buildings, destruction of the last vestiges of suburban Paris to erect buildings with more than questionable aesthetics.
But the Parisians are more and more refractory to this assumed densification and this forced march concreting.
Anne Hidalgo has no choice but to engage in an economic and social aberration: the massive pre-emption of private housing, most of which is already occupied, and the contracting of thousands of housing units belonging to the private sector.
Squandering hundreds of millions of euros to buy private apartments at high prices,
the City does not create any new housing but on the contrary contributes to the scarcity of supply, which precipitates the real estate market and rents into an inflationary spiral.
As always, it is the Parisians who are the first victims.
The capital thus lost 80,000 long-term rental apartments between 2010 and 2015, a trend that continues to grow.
Low-income or middle-class households aspiring to become homeowners must settle in very large suburbs, beyond Nemours, Rambouillet or Meaux.
Rents being prohibitive for families, families with children prefer the suburbs.
For 10 years, the majority of Parisians who have left the capital have also settled in Île-de-France, proof if any were needed.
Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum.
A proverb that the mayor of Paris would be well advised to meditate on.
