Paris Wants to Keep Central Neighborhoods From Becoming 'Ghettos for the Rich'

[marmar]

Paris Wants to Keep Central Neighborhoods From Becoming 'Ghettos for the Rich'
The French capital has announced a plan to stop housing displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods. It might be the most radical proposal Europe has seen.

FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN @FeargusOSull Dec 19, 2014


What can you do when a once socially mixed neighborhood starts turning into a “ghetto for the rich”? Quite a lot, according to the city of Paris. As part of a massive home-building drive, the government of France’s capital has just announced a plan to stop housing displacement in central neighborhoods. It might just be the most radical Europe has yet seen. Earlier this week, the Conseil de Paris published a list of 257 addresses (containing over 8,000 apartments) that the city would have a "right of first-refusal" to buy, in order to convert to subsidized housing. Located in areas that are being gentrified, the city’s plans would both increase subsidized rental options and ensure that at least some housing in these areas remains affordable to lower- and middle-income residents. The plans operate within existing laws rather than creating new ones—but as you can imagine, real-estate professionals aren’t exactly delighted with the proposals.

The nuts and bolts of the plan are as follows. When apartments at any of the 257 addresses come up for sale, they must by law be offered first to the city. The apartment should still be sold at the market price —but the price offered would nonetheless be decided by the city, not the seller. If the landlord doesn’t like what’s offered, he or she can appeal to an independent judge to have it re-priced, or can withdraw the property from the market. What the landlord can’t do, however, is sell the apartment on to someone else without the city having bowed out first.

The broader social-engineering goals here are clear to anyone familiar with Paris when you look at where the addresses are distributed on the map. Typically they are in formerly working-class neighborhoods in northern and eastern Paris—Ménilmontant, the slopes north of Montmartre, the eastern end of the Bastille—where lower-income residents are being displaced. In places, the list even reads a bit like a gentrifiers’ streetfinder, with addresses on busy, broadly hip café and restaurant strips Rue Oberkampf, Rue Jean Pierre Timbaud, and Rue de Charonne. According to mayor’s aide Ian Brossat, the move is about:

Choosing diversity and solidarity, against exclusion, social determinism and the centrifugal logic of the market. It also aims to reduce inequalities between the east and the west of Paris in particular, developing social supply where it is insufficient.

The plan’s ambition will come at a cost—literally. If the city is genuinely going to pay market prices, the plan could be expensive, which is why it has set aside €850 million ($1.05 billion U.S.) for purchases. In reality, as this is a right of first-refusal rather than an outright purchase plan, only 100 or so apartments may be bought up during current mayor Anne Hidalgo’s tenure. The idea is essentially to give Paris the ability to act as a social-mix monitor, steeping in to prevent social segregation in the public interest if they feel it is under threat. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/12/paris-wants-to-keep-central-neighborhoods-from-becoming-ghettos-for-the-rich/383936/

[AndreaCG]

1. I think DeBlasio would like Io do something similar

There was just groundbreaking on several hundred affordable housing units. He could try to squeeze the developers who build luxury apartments into providing even more moderately priced units, hopefully without segregated entrances. He could end the ridiculous tax abatement some luxury buildings get even though you know damn well they'd be built in that upscale neighborhood anyway. He's got a friendly city council. Everyone else is pissed off at him to the point where he'll probably be a one term mayor so he might as well get radical cause the PTB already hate him and what are they going to do, kill him?

[BrotherIvan]

2. Very interesting

San Francisco needs to do this as well. Everyone but the very wealthy is being pushed out of the city.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

3. I think cities should go forward with forcing developers

to build moderate/affordable housing, but I don't think they have to stop building separate entrances if the higher price tags come with separate amenities like extra security, doormen, etc. Aren't they really just building two different complexes that happen to be attached? I think that it is the job of government to support programs - like affordable housing - that benefit society, but I don't think it's right to ask individuals to subsidize amenities for their neighbors with hefty months fees. It makes those apartments more expensive on a monthly basis, and less competitive with builders who are not adding affordable housing, so it actually ends up being a disincentive to more affordable housing, imo.

[AndreaCG]

4. Really?

Your words seem to contradict themselves. The gist of which I interpreted as I got mine maybe a few of you can have a decent place to live but never forget you don't really deserve it cause I won't. And what happens to the masses of people displaced because 80% of New York is being gentrified? Hell, church volunteers are getting arrested for feeding the poor. We live in a world where really the Alan Grayson line about the poor needing to die quickly is being taken seriously.

You may not personally want the poor to just die but you do seen to be advocating an us vs them society. But as the 1% get richer, us increasingly becomes them.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

5. Actually, I'm advocating for higher taxes and more government

funded housing and whatever other incentives the government can come up with to create more housing for the poor and middle class, but I think it is a mistake to create higher monthly fees for individual owners in a building because the building includes lower priced housing.

If there's 50 units in a building, and ten are affordable housing, 40 units are going to pay for round the clock doorman, and other amenities for the ten units that can't afford the price tag. Monthly expenses are going to be more than in the 50 unit complex next door that does not include affordable units. That's a real disincentive to anyone purchasing in these buildings.

It might seem compassionate, but it's bad policy if you want to attract more housing.

[Fumesucker]

6. Cheese eating class warriors

[geek tragedy]

7. If the city unilaterally sets the price, it's by definition not a market price.

Sounds more like straight up seizure/forfeiture than a purchase. But they are intentionally low balling the price, so in reality they are stealing the owner's value in the home.

Market price would be what someone in market is willing to pay for it.