From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution by Fishman Sarah;

Author:Fishman, Sarah;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Limits of Affluence; Continuing Housing Shortages

In spite of the government’s efforts, court records make clear that even in the early 1960s many poor families continued to struggle with inadequate housing. In the Bouches du Rhône, the G family, including parents, a minor child, an adult child with spouse, and their four children, a total of seven people, lived in a two-room apartment in “run-down housing.” The minor shared a “corner sofa” with her oldest niece.22 Also in Bouches-du-Rhône, a mother and her seven children lived in a three-room apartment in one of the last “emergency housing” lodgings.23

Similar squeezing was still evident in the Paris case files. Most extreme was the P family, which in 1962 was living in a small house the husband had built himself. The two parents and their twelve children, along with their oldest daughter’s boyfriend and son, seventeen people in total, crammed themselves into a three-room house with a kitchen. By 1965, the social worker had managed to find them a six-room apartment.24 In the case of the L family, two of the minor children were living with the mother; four other children had been placed by Public Assistance in foster homes. The mother wanted all her children to live with her but could only manage that “if they provided her with decent enough housing.” She and her two children were living in a single room, sharing one bed. They had nearly been evicted two years earlier for nonpayment of rent, but the Seine prefecture’s housing service had maintained her in the room while she awaited new lodging. But with no rent paid, the landlord had cut off her electricity and locked her out of the bathroom on their floor, so she and the children had to climb two floors for access to toilets. The social worker inquired about getting her moved up on the wait list of the Service des mal logés (Service for the poorly housed) so she could get her children back, but was told by the head of that service, given the number of worthy cases they were handling, they could not give her “preferable treatment.” She would have to wait and would not be likely to get a new apartment for several more years.25 The P family of six lived in an apartment with “one tiny bedroom, a minuscule kitchen.” The social worker wrote, “One wonders how six people can keep going in such a limited space.”26

By contrast, in the Nord Department, a region of heavy industry with a tradition of company housing, much of which had been damaged during the war, case files attest to a successful shift. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many workers and their families lived in the temporary barracks quickly put up after the war to fill the void caused by the war’s destruction. By the 1960s, reports noted that many families had moved from barracks into permanent company housing, recently built apartments with amenities such as electricity, gas, and indoor plumbing.27

Thus pockets

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