In Paris, social housing invests in a multi-storey garage

Parisian garages are disappearing and becoming social housing. A real boon for architects, who find it a terribly exciting playground. Residents also come out ahead. They inherit atypical apartments, incomparably more welcoming than the standardized shoeboxes that saturate the new-build market. In this case, the transformation of a garage into a silo on Avenue Parmentier, in Paris's 11th arrondissement, into 63 social housing units (as well as a shop on the ground floor) is a textbook case.

The genesis of the project was chaotic, disrupted by Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and the inflation of the cost of materials, legal action by local residents... And its nature evolved over the course of these crises, as time stretched on. First, because the Paris City Hall asked the architects to study the possibility of preserving part of the building, something that Batigère, the project owner (with Quadral Promotion), had not originally considered. Second, because one of the partners of the project threw in the towel. It involved a company specializing in so-called "dismemberment" operations, a devious scheme that allows local authorities to fill their social housing quotas as defined by the Urban Solidarity and Renewal Act (SRU) by having them financed by private investors. The ruse: after twenty years, the housing becomes private again. And, in the process, the investors minimize their contribution. The dismemberment originally concerned nearly half of the housing; they are now all entirely social.

You have 53.89% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.