Poverty and Housing Crisis

Behind Haussmanian facades, much of Paris lived in appalling conditions. The housing crisis forced working families into overcrowded, unsanitary lodgings that bred disease and despair. These conditions, hidden from tourists and bourgeois residents, created parallel cities within the City of Light.

The garrets of central Paris, romanticized in bohemian mythology, offered miserable reality for most inhabitants. Entire families crowded into single rooms under mansard roofs—stifling in summer, freezing in winter. No running water meant carrying buckets up six flights. Single toilets served entire floors. Tuberculosis spread rapidly in such conditions.

The "hotels meublés" (furnished hotels) housing migrant workers presented worse conditions. Men slept in shifts, sharing beds still warm from previous occupants. Landlords crammed maximum bodies into minimum space. Fire escapes didn't exist. When fires occurred, as at the Hotel Paris-Opéra in 1909 killing seventeen, authorities expressed shock at "unknown" conditions they'd ignored for decades.

Cellar dwellings represented the bottom tier. Families lived below ground level in spaces meant for storage. No windows, minimal ventilation, constant dampness. Children raised in such environments suffered rickets from lack of sunlight. City inspectors condemned these lodgings repeatedly, but housing shortages meant they remained occupied.

The Zone—the strip between Paris proper and fortifications—became shantytown for the desperately poor. Chiffonniers (rag-pickers) built shacks from scavenged materials. No utilities, no sewerage, no official recognition. Yet communities developed, with informal mayors, mutual aid, and fierce independence. The Zone's residents, neither urban nor rural, created their own society.

Middle-class reformers organized charitable visits to poor neighborhoods, returning with horrified reports. The Duchess d'Uzès described visiting a Belleville tenement: "I climbed stairs slippery with filth to rooms where eight people shared two beds. The smell made me faint. Yet they offered me their best chair, apologizing for the 'disorder.' Their dignity amid such degradation moved me to tears."