Desperate students face severe housing shortage

By Jane Marshall. Around a million students about to start the new university year in France have been trying to find a suitable place to live.
The new government has committed itself to a big expansion of student housing, but years of promises by state, regional and student-support authorities have not been fulfilled and there is a severe lack of places in university residences.
Meanwhile, a consumer organisation has filed complaints against 13 agencies that it alleges are illegally selling lists of addresses to students desperately seeking to rent in the private sector.
In 2004 a report by member of parliament Jean-Paul Anciaux set out a plan to construct or rehabilitate 12,000 student housing units a year in the course of the decade to 2014, but the objectives have not been met...
Many students desperately seeking a suitable place resort to operators who, according to consumer organisation UFC-Que Choisir in a report published this week, are illegally selling lists of addresses supposedly available to let. More...