No room for comfort in Paris’s ‘matchboxes’
Government’s health agency says around 50 of these rooms declared uninhabitable each year
Thousands of Parisians round off a hard day’s work with a trudge up six flights of stairs to a tiny, stuffy room they resignedly call home.
In a city where it is notoriously difficult to find a flat — especially on a low budget and without the right paperwork — many rooms that once served as domestic helpers’ sleeping quarters have been turned into apartments for rent.
It is borderline illegal to rent out these micro-apartments, typically wedged under a rooftop, as they measure less than nine square metres (100 square feet) and often lack proper ventilation.
But many people simply cannot afford any better, and some, like receptionist Ivan Lopez, face other barriers. “I don’t have a guarantor, no relatives in Paris, and I have a foreign accent,” says Lopez, a 35-year-old of Mexican origin who rents a room measuring just 6.8 square metres for €370 (Dh1,524; $415) a month.
Repeatedly turned away by rental agencies, he has been unable to find better lodgings for eight years.
Squeezed out
Lopez’s bed, which doubles as a sofa and a storage space, is squeezed against an old fridge and a tiny shower stall.
Flats that were once sleeping quarters for domestic workers are a relic of bourgeois life in the 19th and early 20th centuries when they were referred to as “chambers de bonne” — maids’ rooms.
Astonishingly, they still fetch sky-high prices of up to €11,000 a square metre in Paris’s well-todo neighbourhoods.
According to the Abbe Pierre Foundation, a French NGO that fights for the rights of people living in substandard housing, authorities are dragging their feet on the issue. “Today, there are some 7,000 domestic helpers’ rooms that serve as people’s main place of residence, and which measure less than nine square metres,” says the foundation’s Sarah Coupechoux.
The government’s health agency for the Paris region says that around 50 of these rooms are declared uninhabitable each year, and the number is on the rise.