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Frank Cappello: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's bonus episode of Lever Time, exclusively for the Lever supporting subscribers. I'm producer Frank Capello. Today, we'll be sharing my interview with journalist and author Cole Stangler about his new book, Paris Is Not Dead, Surviving Hypergentrification in the City of Light, which explores how gentrification has affected the cultural makeup of Paris, and the public housing policies that have helped maintain the city's diverse, working class character. We also discussed how this dynamic in European cities like Paris differs from the gentrification and housing policies here in the US. It was a really illuminating and informative conversation, and one that I think American audiences can take a lot from, so we're very excited to share it with you.

Thank you again for being a supporting subscriber and here at The Lever. Now, here's my interview with Cole Stangler. [00:01:00] Alright, we are now joined by Cole Stangler. Cole is a French American journalist and author based in Marseille. Cole, thank you so much for joining us today.

Cole Stangler: Thank you so much for having me.

Frank Cappello: Of course. this is a topic I'm very, uh, interested in speaking with you about as someone who lives in a big, American city. So, your new book is titled Paris is Not Dead, Surviving Hypergentrification in the City of Light. So... I think for, you know, for an American audience, for anyone who lives in an American city has probably seen gentrification happen over the last several decades.

Mostly spurred by the influx of younger generations moving to the cities and then the inevitable real estate and business interests that follow. personally, I lived in L. A. and now Brooklyn, uh, where, you know, I watched gentrification happen in real time and usually what that looked like... Within an American context was, you know, large communities of usually non white working class folks who then become priced out of their own neighborhoods.

so [00:02:00] using that context as the U. S. dynamic of what gentrification can look like, what does gentrification in a city like Paris look like and how you've covered it in your book?

Cole Stangler: Yeah, so I mean, you know, gentrification is one of these words that that gets tossed around. It's not always clear what people are talking about. People might have different definitions in mind. But the way I like to think of it is, is simply an economic process. it's a part of how urban, uh, housing markets work under capitalism, where housing is, commodified, like labor power, to, to use the, kind of classic Marxist, uh, uh, analysis.

Um, and so if, if housing is a, is a commodity. you know, what happens when you have high demand for, for, for this commodity, uh, in, in, in cities, you have, you have a process called gentrification, which, which, you know, is sort of embedded into housing markets under capitalism.

This is the thesis of Neil Smith, who's someone I rely on [00:03:00] a lot in the book. So very concretely, there's really kind of two things that we're talking about when we think about gentrification. One is rent hikes, some amount of significant increases in the cost of housing. And the second is displacement.

And so we see these two trends taking place right now today in Paris. Just to give you a couple of figures. You know, since the year 2000, housing prices have roughly tripled in Paris. So prices have gone way up. it's not a city that used to be known for, for exorbitantly high housing costs. Um, and at the same time, you have displacement, you have people that are leaving the city.

According to the most recent, uh, analysis from the, from the statistics agency in France, you have over 10, 000 people. Uh, leaving the city. So the population, excuse me, is declining by 10, 000 people every year. for several years now in Paris. The population is actually declining. People are leaving the city, and that tends to be mostly lower to middle income people who can't afford to live there.

So, you see these trends again of [00:04:00] rent hikes and displacement. In, you know, in, in a lot of American cities in, in Paris, it has some other kind of spec specificities I could get into. But just to give you some numbers and to situate things, um, you know, it's how cities work, unfortunately, under capitalism, unless we have sort of, countervailing measures, policies in place to, to slow freeze down or block this process, and it's something that we're seeing.

You know, to, to, to a great degree in Paris today.

Frank Cappello: so I want to I want to Zero in on that a little bit. So, you know, I, I know when I lived in Los Angeles, the, the communities that tend to, tended to get displaced, uh, were predominantly the Latino communities that have lived in Los Angeles and Southern California for, you know, generations, um, now that I'm in Brooklyn, I know it.

It's affecting a lot of the black and brown communities that historically have made up a large proportion of Brooklyn's demographic. So who are the people in Paris specifically that are the ones getting displaced because of these rising housing costs?

Cole Stangler: Yeah. You know, it's, it's [00:05:00] talking about, uh, uh, ethnic difference and racial difference in France is a, is a very thorny, uh, always a thorny endeavor in large part because we don't have good statistics, you know, in France, there's no, you know, we don't collect data on people's. Uh, ethnic backgrounds, or, or, or race they identify with.

And so it makes it quite difficult from a kind of statistics point of view. you know, we don't have those numbers to say, you know, to kind of compare with the U. S. However, however, what we can do is look at the kind of composition of, of what, what are we talking about today when we're talking about working class Paris.

to a large degree, we're talking about a population that, either are immigrants themselves or are the descendants of recent immigrants, whether that's second. or even third generation. So people from North Africa, people from Sub Saharan Africa, West Africa, people from China, people from Southeast Asia, and I should say North Africa too, both Muslims and, uh, Jewish population that emigrated to [00:06:00] France after the Second World War and after, uh, Algeria, the war in Algeria.

So you have an extremely diverse city that I think doesn't... Also kind of get the quite the credit it deserves. And this is, this is the population. you know, again, it depends on the neighborhood depends on the specifics, specific neighborhood. But this is the kind of population that that overlaps a lot with what's left of working class Paris.

These are the kinds of people that are that are leaving the city today, just to give you, you know, some more numbers. you know, France is a country that's that's I think again, like I said, in many, in many ways, very multicultural, a lot of history of immigration doesn't quite get the recognition I think that it deserves, you know, 11 percent nationally are immigrants that is born on foreign soil, as foreigners.

And then that, that rate goes up to around 25 percent in Paris. It's even higher when you go out to the suburbs of Paris. So we're talking about a very diverse, area and one to kind of respond to your initial point. you know, one that is getting less, uh, uh, less diverse, less working class if we're [00:07:00] looking at the kind of people that are, you know, that are buying a property in, uh, in the Northeast of Paris, which is really the kind of last, broadly speaking, remaining kind of belt of affordable housing in the city.

Frank Cappello: That's actually a great segue to my next question because the book focuses on the neighborhoods in Paris that have, uh, Not been as transformed by gentrification, um, and, and largely these are, uh, neighborhoods that have remained with, that have remained like a large working class immigrant population.

So, what do you think it is about a working class diaspora that is so crucial to a city's character? And I, and I gotta say, you write very beautifully about, you know, just sort of like these, these multicultural neighborhoods, and what would be lost, by a city like Paris if it just became one giant upper middle class?

Cole Stangler: Yeah. No, thanks. I mean, I, I think, um, you know, uh, a lot there's, there's a, you know, a neighborhood that I spend a lot of time in that I report on in the, in the book, uh, called Belleville. And, you know, to me, it's really the kind of [00:08:00] the epitome of sort of what I'm talking about. you know, where you have just to kind of paint a picture, you know, you get off the Metro in, in, in Belleville and, uh, you know, there's lots of Chinese restaurants kind of going up the street.

There's a lot of. butcher shops, uh, owned by mostly Sephardic Jews, you have, uh, Chinese sex workers that are lining up at the, uh, on the block as well, kind of young North African men selling cigarettes, you have kind of younger musician artists, people, um, you have older, uh, uh, North African immigrants that are kind of drinking their coffee and, and, and hanging out on the cafe terraces and you have this, you have this, this real mix and exchange I think is, is, is really fundamental.

you know, and it, um, In, in these neighborhoods, this kind of, um, you know, it's, it's a term that I, you know, that's gotten some attention in France recently, uh, it comes from a, a Caribbean, uh, poet, Edouard Glissant, who talks about this process of creolization, this idea that you have different, people that ultimately in exchange and interaction create something new, and I think [00:09:00] that's kind of the process that we have in, in the northeast of Paris.

It's not this idea of saying, You know, there's the Chinese community, then the, uh, you know, Jewish North African community, then the Muslim North African community, as if there are kind of these distinct communities that are not overlapping. But in fact, There's an exchange and interaction that is kind of constantly happening, and that's because, you know, the, the, the, the affordable housing allows these people to stay in the city, and it keeps them in close contact with, with one another.

So I think that's such a fundamental part of, of Paris today is, is, you know, another, another point, which I haven't even mentioned is just how dense of a city Paris is as well. Again, this is somewhat specific to Paris, but, you know, it's such a dense city, you know, uh, parts of it are on, on par with. You know, the big cities in the Philippines and Bangladesh.

so you have just a lot of people kind of sharing the same space. And this kind of common space, I think, is also, you know, breeds interaction and exchange and the creation of culture. and, you know, I think that that's a [00:10:00] fundamental part of what we'd miss and what we'd lose. And I think just to kind of step a little bit back in history, because I talk about this in the book as well, I won't blabber on for too long here, but if you look at the history of the city, sort of one of the things that That makes Paris great, so to speak, is this kind of, this, this really rich artistic heritage.

You know, Paris was for a long time a kind of artistic Mecca for the early part of the 20th century. That was a time when affordable housing, you know, when there was affordable housing in the city. It's a very simple point, but really can't be stressed enough. When you have cheap housing, you know, It attracts young people, artists, weird people that want to have the time to, to, to experiment with whatever it is they're experimenting with.

That's a fundamental part of artistic creation and cultural creation. When you get rid of affordable housing, you know, you don't have those kinds of people coming to the city to create culture anymore. And sadly, you know, Paris is no longer the kind of artistic Mecca that it once was. And, it's because if you're a young person today who wants to make music or...

you know, or right or whatever, you know, look at the [00:11:00] housing costs in Paris. It's not going to be your first choice. at least not, not Paris proper within the, you know, the, the, the, the city limits.

Frank Cappello: Yeah, you give the really, uh, great example about the American writer and poet James Baldwin, who was able to move to Paris in the 20s with 40 in his pocket because of how affordable it was to live in that time. Um, it also made me think of the, you know, the film Midnight in Paris, which I, you know, Woody Allen film has its own issues, in today's context, but, like, speaking to what, speaking to what you're saying, like, you couldn't have such a, like, a diverse, uh, working class artist community without some of these, um, more socially minded housing policies that Paris had been known for in the past.

so I wanna, I wanna talk more about social housing, because it's something that we have in the U. S., but, You know, I, I think most people's idea of either, you know, uh, subsidized housing, affordable housing, public housing in the U. S. is that it's, you know, very, very low quality housing for people on the margins of society.

But, to speak [00:12:00] to the neighborhood of, uh, Belleville, which you had just mentioned, so around 40 percent of the housing stock are managed by public authorities. that guarantee below market rates for residents with low to middle incomes. So, how, how robust of a program is Paris social housing? Is it, is it something that has gotten weaker over time?

Is it, has it just basically sort of maintained its own, integrity?

Cole Stangler: Yeah. I mean, you know, the, the, the social housing and it's kind of an irony that that's, that's a little bit, yeah, it's certainly, it's certainly an irony. You have this, this social housing has actually been expanded in, in, in recent years. Uh, it's grown quite a bit over the last couple of decades and actually coincides with this period of.

Of the big increase in, in, uh, in housing costs. Okay, so there's, there's a clear contradiction there. And something that I asked, you know, in the book, I talked to the deputy mayor of housing who's with the Communist Party about this. And I said, you know, I mean, okay, you're, you say you're, you know, you're, you're doing all this stuff to protect the city.

But, you know, you're presiding over this massive increase in housing costs. You know, [00:13:00] how do you kind of reconcile these things? And, you know, what he said and what defenders of the policy will say. Um, which I think is true to, to, to some extent is they say, yes, you know, we, we are seeing gentrification, we are seeing a big hike in housing costs, but the question you have to ask is what would it look like if we didn't have any social housing at all?

Um, the answer is it would be a lot worse. Okay. So that, that in, in some ways it's kind of, you know, maybe letting them off easy, but I think it's, it's, it's true to the extent that that's the, that's the kind of one, countervailing force we have that has made, that has ensured that Paris doesn't look even worse than it does.

It could be London, it could be New York. But the difference is, you know, we have more, uh, more social housing, more social housing going up today in the city. To give you some figures here, you mentioned Belleville, 40%, so that's a very high overall, the city now has reached around 23 percent of the housing stock being social housing.

And it's played a huge role in allowing people to stay. If you look at kind of the northeast of Paris, where the book takes place, [00:14:00] these are neighborhoods that, um, you know, if you think of affordable housing as kind of the lifeblood. Of the city. Social housing is kind of like the, you know, the marrow or something like that, even, you know, beyond the lifeblood.

It's kind of like the essence of affordable housing. And that's why, you know, these neighborhoods are what they are. So social housing is now, you know, 23%. And part of that is You know, the city of Paris is is required by law to reach 25 percent social housing by 2025 and then beyond by 2030. So they're complying with the French law, which requires large cities to follow this, this, um, this, this program.

So, you know, I think it's one of the great policy tools that exists in France that unfortunately don't have in the US. There's, I could go into detail about some of the other tools that are in place today in Paris. The big other big one is, is rent controls, but, but certainly I think the most. compelling, attractive, interesting one is social housing.

Frank Cappello: No, that's incredible to hear, and that makes me somewhat hopeful for maybe the future of New York that [00:15:00] we'll get to adopt some sort of policy like that. Um, but I do want to ask you about rent control and rent stabilization. Do those exist in a city like Paris, and how, how strong are some of those housing policies?

Cole Stangler: So to take a little bit of a kind of step back in time, that period we were talking about, when Paris is kind of the artistic mecca, James Baldwin, um, you know, in the 20s, whatever, Man Ray, all the people in Midnight in Paris that you mentioned, this was an era in which you had very strict rent controls.

you know, just to give you some figures after, after second, the second world war, uh, when France needed to rebuild itself, the, uh, minister of development, uh, and urbanism said that in, in 1948, French people were spending, uh, seven times more on tobacco. Then they were on rent, which is quite a, uh, uh, uh, I mean, an astonishing figure and, and that was because of

these really

Frank Cappello: like the most French thing I've ever heard.

Cole Stangler: yeah, because of very robust, uh, rent controls.

that have been put into place and extended. And so you have a period where, to [00:16:00] summarize quickly, kind of limited rent controls, after the Second World War until the 80s, and that's the period in which they start to get repealed. And so now only recently do we have rent controls back in place in Paris, and you have a constant kind of regulatory political battles between the national government and the city.

I won't bore the listeners by going too much into detail about French... kind of political battles, uh, over, you know, who has the authority to do what. But the long story short is the city of Paris finally has the ability to, to do rent controls again. But the national government is the one that sets the levels.

Uh, so they could be better. but they're also better than nothing. And, and, you know, finally now there's You know, this culture that's coming back into place of rent controls and also enforcing them. so, you know, for this situation to get even better, you know, housing activists say, you know, we need to continue to build social housing, maybe even more of it, and we need to have stricter rent controls that are better enforced.

There's other measures as well, but those, those are two, you know, truly fundamental ones. one, one more aspect to add, you know, because we're talking about the U. [00:17:00] S. versus the, the French context. I mean. I have to say it's somewhat striking, you know, it's been striking for me as someone who did a lot of research. On the French context who lives in France, you know, spend a lot of time talking to affordable housing activists where they'll instantly talk about social housing, rent controls, other regulatory measures to kind of, intervene in the market, you know, taking over, uh, unused housing, et cetera.

And it's really striking to me how different that is from a lot of the discourse in the U. S., which, which can, can, you know, seems, can often be caught up in this kind of NIMBY versus NIMBY divide, the yes in my backyard versus not in my backyard, which, which really is focused on the question of supply.

And I don't want to suggest that supply isn't important. You know, people in France, also in Europe, think about, supply as well. Surely, you know, having more housing supply can have an effect, you know, on, on prices, but it's really, it's, it's one variable and that's, you know, one of the things I want to, you know, I hope can be taken away from the book.

you know, interested in politics in the U. [00:18:00] S. to say, well, you know, obviously, yes, supplies is one aspect of this, but we need to talk about who owns the housing that's being built, who's managing the housing that's being built, how are we regulating it? And I think just the European kind of framework for dealing with affordable housing, I think is helpful to kind of think about in the U.

S. where we're, unfortunately to me, at least from my kind of outside perspective, can seem very caught up in this. It's kind of singular question of building or not building. I know I'm simplifying, but that to me, you know, seems to take up an inordinate amount of the debate in the U. S. I think.

Frank Cappello: Well, another big issue in terms of supply, uh, just in the U. S. is the, uh, the private equity industry, and the corporate real estate industry, which has been buying up housing units across the country and putting a squeeze on the market, which has, you know, really, taken off since in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

so are, are cities like Paris and across the EU also experiencing this? Is there a big, push from the private equity industry and, and [00:19:00] large, uh, corporate real estate industries to gobble up as many units as possible?

Cole Stangler: Yeah, there definitely are quite a few developers in Paris. One of the other big trends you have is you have very wealthy foreign investors. who'd like to have their kind of, you know, pied à terre in, in, in Paris who want to have a nice luxury apartment in the city and in the city where you have limited, uh, housing stock, this actually does have an impact, even if it's at the upper end of the market, what it means is that, you know, if you have, super rich investors coming in from Dubai or the United States, or even from the South of France or, or, or France itself, you know, looking in the, in the center of Paris, it means that the bourgeois, uh, you know, I don't know, upper manager, you know, who would have lived there before now has to look elsewhere.

And it means that the person who then, you know, would have looked in that neighborhood is now looking elsewhere. And so you have this kind of trickle down, uh, for lack of a better word, kind of effect that comes really from, from the top. That's, that's a huge [00:20:00] factor, is this, this influx of, of kind of, of foreign, um, you know, very wealthy French people, but also foreign, uh, investors, China as well.

China, the U. S. And, you know, we live in an era of, you know, rampant, uh, uh, consumerism and, and, and, and capitalism where we don't seem to have any borders on the, you know, flow of movement and, uh, and, and the flow of goods under capitalism, hyper globalized culture. And so when you, when people see they can easily, you know, go to Paris and, and have the kind of, you know, be inspired to go to Paris and, and, and, you know, You know, I don't make too big of a deal of it, but like series is like, you know, Emily in Paris and there's even a worse Netflix series about real estate in Paris, you know, we live in this society where, you know, you, you, you can make that happen if you have the means to do it.

And so in a city that has, you know, there's already super dense, that has very limited housing stock available, you know, these super rich investors at the very top, along with developers, you know, have a significant [00:21:00] impact.

Frank Cappello: So the French Parliament is currently debating a new controversial immigration bill, uh, which would make expulsions easier for undocumented migrants. So what is the dynamic playing out right now within French politics that have led to a bill like this being proposed?

Cole Stangler: Yeah. I mean, there's, um. there's been a shift under, uh, President Emmanuel Macron when he was, since he was first elected in 2017, in which he didn't seem to have a, uh, you know, particularly strong anti immigrant view, you know, in many ways, you know, quite socially liberal, but I think what's shifted between, you know, between, you know, since then is really the political context overall and, and, um, Macron understanding or making the calculation that he needed to move to the right, uh, in order to, to win support.

that happened in his first term and now in his second term, uh, he's faced with a, with an almost kind of, uh, not existential, but his, his coalition today, requires the [00:22:00] support of, uh, the right in order to, to have a governing functioning majority in the National Assembly. And so you have even more of this.

kind of constant turning to the right because that is the way that they're able to govern without having to call for new elections. And so, I would say there was a political choice, kind of an ideological choice made in the first term to move to the right because they calculated that it would be to their benefit.

and then now we have the situation where, you know, in order to, to maintain a majority, they, they literally have to rely on the right. And so we've been seeing concession after concession in this immigration bill, um, made, made towards the right. so it's not, not the, not the, not the most, uh, joyous time today in, in French politics.

Frank Cappello: And I take it that, you know, similar to US politics, there's been an increased, uh, you know, scapegoating of immigrants, mostly from, you know, extreme right wingers. Um, is that sort of like the same dynamic just within like the French population where, you know, there's been an, there's been an increase in, um, immigrants and [00:23:00] refugees and asylum seekers over the last several decades that's sort of fueling this sort of, nationalistic push to, you know, keep the immigrants out, for lack of a better term.

Cole Stangler: Yeah, I mean, there's been a, a slight increase, in recent years, but the numbers, you know, the numbers of, of, of, for immigration and asylum seekers are not that, striking if you, if just when you put them into context, you know, I think what we have is, you know, a far right that is, is, you know, has, has quite a lot of support, um, that has been building a base for years.

And then I think, you know, another difference is like I was kind of alluding to. You have a president and a governing majority that have decided politically that it's to their benefit to play to, right wing electors and kind of flirt with, flirt with the far right. I'm not suggesting they, you know, they agree, but there's another kind of more cynical political calculation I think is very important to emphasize.

Uh, I mean, there's a million factors, but one just kind of very cynical political calculation that I think is, is [00:24:00] so important to understand when you're thinking about French politics, which is that the far right from the government's perspective and from Macron's perspective is the best enemy that, that they could have.

This is how they're able to easily win, relatively, uh, win re election. If you look at 2017, if you look at 2022, Macron won because he was not Marine Le Pen. Um, if you look at the breakdown of the votes, there was not a, uh, a huge chunk of Macron voters voted for him because they, quote, wanted to, um, block Marine Le Pen from winning.

And so, from the perspective of the Macronists... They're quite happy to have the far right in front of them. because the far right is seen right now, at least, as being less credible, less competent. still provoking enough distaste that French people are not gonna, you know, elect them in the office.

But how long can kind of the cynical game go on? And, and, more explicitly, I mean, it means that you have both Macron and the far right that are constantly attacking, uh, the left on a number of issues. [00:25:00] Accusing them of being soft on Islam, on, on, you know, on, on Islamists. Of, of being... you know, too radical when it comes to the, to the environment, accusing them of being in some cases anti semitic when we're looking at the, the, the conflict and the war in Gaza.

so a number of really, you know, really vicious kind of allegations. being made by, by both these forces, the government and the far right, because in some, in some ways it serves them, each of them, to have, to have, you know, one, one on the other dominating the political conversation. so that, that, that's kind of the dynamic, I should say.

All that said, you still have another third block, what I think of, you know, of the left that, that still exists. Somewhat divided today again, but, you know, the left is still very much a presence in France, and I think to end on maybe, you know, a somewhat hopeful or optimistic note, you know, France has avoided a scenario like the one in Italy where the left is completely absent, you know, more or less absent from the national conversation.

In France, there is a You know, dynamic left that attracts young voters, that attracts immigrant voters, or, or, or, excuse me, people of, you [00:26:00] know, sons and daughters of, of, of immigrants who are French citizens who vote, you know, a working class base. So the left is very much present in France. You know, it needs to do more to win, but I don't want to paint too dire of a, of a picture here.

Frank Cappello: No, it's not too dire at all. In fact, I wonder what, uh, you know, I wonder what it would be like if that dynamic was prevalent here in the United States as well. I'm joking because it does sound very similar to, you know, sort of the larger political dynamics in U. S. politics. Well, Cole, thank you so much for your time today.

Uh, Cole Stangler is a French American journalist and author based in Marseille, covering labor and politics. His new book is Paris is Not Dead, Surviving Hypergentrification in the City of Light. Cole, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Cole Stangler: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Frank Cappello: That's it for today's episode. Thank you, again, for being a paid subscriber to The Lever. We really could not do this work without you.

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Capitalism. And, of course, head on over to levernews. com to check out all of the incredible reporting that our team has been doing. Until next time, I'm Frank Capello. The Lever Time Podcast is a production of The Lever and The Lever Podcast Network. It's hosted by David Sirota. Our producer is me, Frank Capello, with help from Lever producer Jared Jackangmayer.