Ian: Let’s see some of this in West Van / Point Grey 🙂
The French capital badly needs more affordable housing and is building a large amount of it between now and 2020, with one significant twist. Almost 5,000 of these new affordable units will be built in the city’s center and west, giving future tenants some of the wealthiest neighbors in all France. As you might expect, the plans are controversial. So is this a necessary social rebalancing, or class war?
The concept seems somewhat less dramatic when you zoom out to the bigger picture. Paris hopes to create 7,000 new public housing units every year between now and the next elections in 2020. Given that only 5,000 units in total are planned for especially prosperous areas across this period, that means that most new units will still be created in the less wealthy east, where most of the city’s public housing is already concentrated.
