4.7 square metres: Paris takes action against renting small apartments

Small, smaller, even smaller – in Paris there are many unimaginable and often unacceptably small one-bedroom apartments for rent. In the hair-raising case, the city is now taking action against renting a 4.7-square-meter apartment for which a waiter pays a monthly rent of 550 euros, Le Parisien reports.

When the 42-year-old climbs onto his loft bed, acrobatics are required because there is only a 50cm distance between the mattress and the ceiling. “I only come here to sleep,” he said, “otherwise it would be frustrating.” The city has now declared the room uninhabitable and wants the waiter’s assistance under civil law.

Six applicants for an illegal small apartment

The law actually states that an apartment must consist of at least one main room with an area of ​​at least nine square metres, and a ceiling not less than 2.20 meters high or a volume of 20 cubic metres.

The newspaper wrote that in this case, the landlord simply wrote the volume of 24 cubic meters in the lease, twice the actual volume. Waiter Massi, from Algeria, paid 300 euros to a real estate agency upon his arrival in Paris in 2018, and moved into the room with six other candidates.

The residences of former servants

The spokesperson for the Right to Housing Association (DAL), Jean-Baptiste Ayrault, told Parisien that the case of the Macy’s small room illustrates the housing crisis in the French capital. The owners take advantage of this and offer impossible places. As an official from the city’s housing authority explained, there are 58,000 former servants’ rooms in Paris, “maids’ rooms”, which are less than eight square meters in size and are sometimes rented.