Paris’s city government has a plan to turn the tiny ‘chambres de bonne,’ sleeping rooms for maids, into highly-desirable city apartments, as part of a strategy to relieve the city’s chronic housing shortage.
The rooms, on the top floors (often without elevators) of 19th and early 20th century buildings are relics of an age where many more families had maids and other domestic help than today.
In some buildings, they have been sold at prices up to €11,000 per square meter, but many are unused, in need of renovation, and often just too small to be legally rented. A study of the more than 100,000 chambres last year indicated that more than half are under the 9 square meter limit, and would have to be combined with others to be legal. However, about 15% of the illegal ones are occupied anyway.
The city has set aside a budget of €10 million for loans and subsidies to get landlords to do the renovations and get apartments on the market; the aid could go as high as €14,000 per apartment.
