As we have done nothing, as we are doing nothing to build suitable and healthy homes, we must leave the unfortunate people with the available shelter, and for several years already we have no longer dared to throw a pickaxe in these unspeakable slums that disgrace Paris.
The unfortunate people condemned to live in these hovels are certain prey to epidemics and tuberculosis, but where do you want them to go?...
In the heart of Paris

However, do not think that slums are rare in our City of Lights. They still exist in their hundreds and I invite unrepentant skeptics to undertake an instructive walk in the most deprived districts of the capital, through the dark and nauseating alleys, the slippery and fetid dead ends of the suburbs and also through more important arteries which crisscross the very heart of the big city.
But today let's visit the immediate surroundings of Boulevard Saint-Germain. There, behind the "noble faubourg", they will find a sordid neighborhood or after crossing the rue du Clos-Bruneau, where the facades, if one can call it that poor cob walls blackened by years and dirt, are join to the point that it must be possible for the inhabitants to shake hands from one window to another, we arrive at the ancient rue des Carmes where the convent of the same name once stood.

Moves in Ruins

The show is worth stopping there. The hideous buildings which were undoubtedly very beautiful in the Middle Ages - tired from too long service, began to slowly collapse onto the road. Rue des Carmes is now cluttered with materials of all kinds, nasty planks trying to remedy the irreparable... To get through, you have to climb over stones and beams.

Where to go?

On the threshold of numbers 17, 19 and 32, I ask the unfortunate tenants what painful ordeal led them to these ruins:
- What do you want, they answer me, we don't know where to go. Here we are; we stay there.
- Does the Health Commission never pass?
- She even periodically invites us to leave our homes, but, as she is unable to provide us with new ones... So, we wait.
- Does the owner never make repairs?
Repairs!... But all this is no longer repairable, and, besides, the owner is not rich, sighs a young woman who lives, with her two children, in a low, airless room, where she cooks and makes straw slippers while waiting for her husband to return...

The cure

A distressing distress that should be remedied without delay. But what can the hygiene commissions of the Town Hall do against this lamentable state of affairs which is getting worse from month to month? They see the danger and write long reports which will pile up in dusty piles.
However, it is not monuments of statistics that should be erected to ward off the housing crisis but rather solid modern buildings that we must hasten to construct. Lamentations and long palavers are no longer in season. We must act...

ROBERT BOUCARD.