Housing shortage

In the fall of 1945, I was temporarily stationed in Paris for a couple of months awaiting reassignment to some other location in Europe, for the Army of Occupation. Two months in Paris was pretty pleasant duty I must admit even if everything was still on a wartime footing, rationing and all. What I noticed, traveling around the city, was how really old all the buildings were. Nowhere was there any sign of new construction or repairs (since Hitler had ordered the city destroyed, but the local Nazi commanding general had disobeyed Hitler’s orders, the old girl was very old but good as new. I spoke pretty good French at the time and could converse with the locals which is how I learned the City was under rent control, had been for 50 years, and according to my French host:…”had not seen one brick of new construction for that entire 50 years.” Not a single new building had gone up. There was simply no profit to be made under rent control, so there was no speculative building, neither residential nor commercial. No construction debris, no blocked roads or sidewalks, but, also, no new housing to keep up with the population growth. As it is with Santa Cruz: great place to visit but you can’t afford to live there.
Howard F. Sosbee 1400 Weston Ridge Road Scotts Valley CA, 95066 831, 335, 8401 hfs@sosbee.com <mailto:hfs@sosbee.com>