ABSTRACT
By 1954, France was experiencing a housing shortage of gigantic proportions: 14 million people lived in overcrowded accommodation; half a million families lived in hotels or furnished rooms; several hundred thousand lived in makeshift shanty settlements; and about 10,000 families were squatting. In January 1954, a child, staying in a makeshift shelter put up by Abbe Pierre, died of exposure. Problems were greatly intensified by new immigration from overseas to swell the urban workforce, which accelerated from 1946 onwards. The Minister of Reconstruction, Eugene Claudius Petit, made an impassioned statement that the post-war aim of ‘rebuilding France’ was like ‘a country facing the future with its eyes turned towards the past, from which it would not escape’. France entered the mass housing era with an enormous deficit, huge political momentum and the pressure of shanty towns ringing her still preserved and much visited capital.
