French Estimate 'Comfort Value' For Rents

Northern Advocate, 22 December 1948, Page 7

French Estimate 'Comfort Value' For Rents

(By Odette Paguerre, Reuters Correspondent)

PARIS (By Airmail). —Flat dwellers and house tenants throughout France are now busily calculating the measurements of their homes and estimating their “comfort value” in preparation for a new rent assessment coming into force on January 1, 1949.

The new rents will be assessed per square metre with such amenities as sunlight, view and comfort (gas, electricity, heating, running water, rubbish-chutes, lifts and so on) taken into consideration.

If owners and occupiers prefer to save themselves a headache, they will be entitled to reach an agreement between themselves on the basis of a 33 per cent increase on the rent paid last July. This upward adjustment of rents is expected to go far towards solving France’s urgent reconstruction problem.

The Minister for Reconstruction (M. Petit) explaining the new law at a recent Press conference, attributed French housing difficulties to:

Referring to what he described as the absurdly low present rate of rents, M. Petit stressed that Frenchmen today spend only about 21 per cent of their income on their rent —compai'ed with 16 per cent in 1914. This means that an average Frenchman, earning 16,00 francs a month, works less than a week per year to pay for his rent. The French housing situation is shown up by the following figures:

(1) Lack of labour. (2) Insufficient state credits. (3) Low rents and lack of private investments.

About half of France's building workers, some 700,000 strong, are at present employed solely on mending and preserving dilapidated buildings,” he said.

At the liberation, about 700,000 fam ilies in France were without shelter

“Only 20,000 buildings have been put up in France this year,” he declared, “in contrast to Britain, where they are building at the rate of 20.000 a month.

More than 2,000,000 buildings had been totally or partially destroyed by the war. Today, there are 8,000,000 town dwellings, 20 per cent of which are over 100 years old, and 5,000.000 coun,try dwellings, of which 70 per cent are over 100 years old. About 500,000 dwellings are classed as “slums” and mere than 1,000,000 buildings are in danger of falling into this category.

“To get back to normal, it would be necessary to build 30,000 flats a month for five years.” The Government’s aims for the time being, however, are limited to building 20.000 flats a month. If this rhythm can be achieved and maintained over the next five year 3, the natural law of supply and demand will again come into play.

ONE-KOOM FLATS In Paris alone, 27 per cent of the city’s buildings were built before 1830. Some 4000 buildings were destroyed during the last war and 58,000 damaged. About 35,000 families of three, four or five persons are now living in one-room flats, while 24,000 bachelors and married couples are living in five or six-room flats. Sixteen per cent of Paris flats have no bathroom, and one in five flats has no running water, according to official statistics. Early this year, the Prefect of the Seine Department (Greater Paris), M. Roger Verlomme, presented the Seine Municipal Council with a plan for the construction of <OOO flats in his department. The plan is now under way.