Look at these views of and from our building. Notice anything? Despite the fact that these are taken at reasonable hours -- around 9pm, at different times of year -- there are almost no lights on. We're pretty sure that the people aren't just sitting around in the dark. There is just very low residency, since it's a desirable neighborhood to own a little (million dollar or more) pied-a-terre.
Down at the far end of Ile St. Louis, the Hotel Lambert is being renovated; despite the name, it's not a hotel in the English sense of the word but rather the French, meaning "mansion". A Qatari prince bought it from the de Rothschilds in 2007 for around $111 million, with proposed renovations that will, supposedly, roughly double the cost. Some of these were controversial, since it is a designated historical building, but he finally got approval, and work has begun. Besides bringing back many rooms to their former glory, he's also allowed to modernize a bit and put in, among other technologies, air conditioning. I have to say, that seems barely necessary here (only a couple weeks a year), and he could've knocked fifty thousand off the construction costs right there.
There's the new rich, the old rich, and the movie-star rich, all on our one tiny island. But despite our lofty neighbors (but not neighbors in lofts: strictly old-school here), we are not the only non-rich, non-famous, non-royal, non-Qatari people living here. Three of Pippa's and Gigi's classmates do, in fact, live on the island and all, coincidentally and confusingly, with the same given name. One of them lives on the island across the street from her mother's childhood home, where the grandmother not only still lives but also grew up. So it is a place for "real" families too.
Ile St. Louis has oodles of charm, and the French themselves wax rhapsodic about it. Since it transformed from "Cow Island," where the cattle belonging to the Cathedral of Notre Dame grazed in the 17th century, the island has almost always had an air of grandeur, with mansions on the quais and a parade of who's who residents (Balzac, Baudelaire, Marie Curie, Voltaire, Hemingway, Georges Pompidou, Camille Claudel, and Jodie Foster). Sometimes it's actually a little embarrassing to tell people we live here; in order to de-snobbify the situation, we feel we need to qualify it with an explanation that we got really lucky, and got a good deal. (Or that we will somebody be rich and famous?)
Pippa's friend's grandmother tells me that until about ten, twenty years ago, it was not a heavily touristy island, and the shops down below were mostly little grocers. Now, besides the one or two wildly overpriced emergency food shops, it's mostly expensive jewelry, clothing boutiques, restaurants, and a few souvenir shops. The grandmother remembers when it had a rat problem, before the gentrification. I'm kind of happy the rats are gone, but if I had a time machine, I would love to go back and see it before it became such a destination. And to buy some real estate at twenty-years-ago prices, natch.
But why do they sit empty? There are a few big reasons, even besides the fact the many of these owners don't need to worry about the rental income. One is that property taxes are low here, so inherited or fully-paid-for apartments do not cost much to upkeep. More importanty, if you thought it was bad to be a landlord in the Bay Area (hello, rent control!), French tenancy laws make San Francisco and Berkeley look positively right-wing. At the moment, the law is such that nobody can be evicted, for any reason at all, between the months of October to May (the point being, it's too cold to put somebody on the streets). The current administration, much more left than the previous, has proposed extending this to a year-round no-eviction ban.
Under the current system, it is already extremely difficult to get somebody out of an apartment, even for excellent cause, and even during the summer. Everybody has horror stories to share about somebody they knew (either tenant or landlord) in a situation where even respectable, well-heeled tenants simply stopped paying, for years on end, because essentially they knew there would be no repercussions. It is slightly easier to get somebody out of a furnished apartment, which is why, when apartment hunting, one will see many "furnished" apartments that basically consist of a few junky pieces of mismatched garage sale furniture. I also think it is one reason why our own landlords were more willing to rent to us. Originally, they weren't even planning to rent their apartment, probably for the reasons listed. But we were introduced through a mutual friend, so we came recommended. Plus: ex-pats have a good reputation both for paying and -- most important -- for eventually leaving.
There's the new rich, the old rich, and the movie-star rich, all on our one tiny island. But despite our lofty neighbors (but not neighbors in lofts: strictly old-school here), we are not the only non-rich, non-famous, non-royal, non-Qatari people living here. Three of Pippa's and Gigi's classmates do, in fact, live on the island and all, coincidentally and confusingly, with the same given name. One of them lives on the island across the street from her mother's childhood home, where the grandmother not only still lives but also grew up. So it is a place for "real" families too.
Ile St. Louis has oodles of charm, and the French themselves wax rhapsodic about it. Since it transformed from "Cow Island," where the cattle belonging to the Cathedral of Notre Dame grazed in the 17th century, the island has almost always had an air of grandeur, with mansions on the quais and a parade of who's who residents (Balzac, Baudelaire, Marie Curie, Voltaire, Hemingway, Georges Pompidou, Camille Claudel, and Jodie Foster). Sometimes it's actually a little embarrassing to tell people we live here; in order to de-snobbify the situation, we feel we need to qualify it with an explanation that we got really lucky, and got a good deal. (Or that we will somebody be rich and famous?)
Pippa's friend's grandmother tells me that until about ten, twenty years ago, it was not a heavily touristy island, and the shops down below were mostly little grocers. Now, besides the one or two wildly overpriced emergency food shops, it's mostly expensive jewelry, clothing boutiques, restaurants, and a few souvenir shops. The grandmother remembers when it had a rat problem, before the gentrification. I'm kind of happy the rats are gone, but if I had a time machine, I would love to go back and see it before it became such a destination. And to buy some real estate at twenty-years-ago prices, natch.
But why do they sit empty? There are a few big reasons, even besides the fact the many of these owners don't need to worry about the rental income. One is that property taxes are low here, so inherited or fully-paid-for apartments do not cost much to upkeep. More importanty, if you thought it was bad to be a landlord in the Bay Area (hello, rent control!), French tenancy laws make San Francisco and Berkeley look positively right-wing. At the moment, the law is such that nobody can be evicted, for any reason at all, between the months of October to May (the point being, it's too cold to put somebody on the streets). The current administration, much more left than the previous, has proposed extending this to a year-round no-eviction ban.
Under the current system, it is already extremely difficult to get somebody out of an apartment, even for excellent cause, and even during the summer. Everybody has horror stories to share about somebody they knew (either tenant or landlord) in a situation where even respectable, well-heeled tenants simply stopped paying, for years on end, because essentially they knew there would be no repercussions. It is slightly easier to get somebody out of a furnished apartment, which is why, when apartment hunting, one will see many "furnished" apartments that basically consist of a few junky pieces of mismatched garage sale furniture. I also think it is one reason why our own landlords were more willing to rent to us. Originally, they weren't even planning to rent their apartment, probably for the reasons listed. But we were introduced through a mutual friend, so we came recommended. Plus: ex-pats have a good reputation both for paying and -- most important -- for eventually leaving.
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