samedi 26 juillet 2008

Parisian Logic


Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that everything in Paris is done backwards. Whilst many would argue that I'm not the most logical person, I pride myself on the fact that at least I'm not as illogical as Parisians.

To describe the hunt for an apartment in Paris as hell would be a massive understatement. Undoubtedly searching for an apartment in any city is a difficult process, but in Paris it seems like an additional layer of unnecessary administrative crap is thrown in to test your strength. Being a foreigner on top of this really is the icing on the cake. I guess Parisians feel their city is so good that if you really want to live in it you have to be able to prove to the French that you're strong enough to withstand the apartment searching torture.

The first problem us non-millionaires come across is how to convince real estate agents or landlords that we earn enough money to pay the rent. This sounds like a relatively simple process, surely some recent payslips as proof of income would suffice? Unfortunately this is not even close to good enough for the French. They need a guarantor to be satisfied that when you can't pay the rent anymore, someone else will. Fair enough. This person however has to be someone who is French or has lived in France for a substantial period of time and earns a net salary that is 3 times the amount of your rent. If I were the daughter of Bill Gates this wouldn't be enough to secure an apartment in Paris. France doesn't want anything to do with some American computer nerd. My family in Australia certainly aren't up to the French standards and despite their more than adequate income, are of no use to me at all in this case. There is only one solution it would appear - find a French guarantor. Easier said than done. A mental search of all the French people I know brings up a list of people around my age who earn roughly the same, if not less, than I do and are therefore useless as guarantors. Those few friends of mine from work who do earn enough to cover my ass have been living in France for less than 2 years which means they do not have a copy of their French tax return - therefore useless again! Determined that there must be a way around this guarantor problem I decided to go to the HR department at work and ask them for help. They came up with some good advice - for young people or foreigners like myself the government has recently introduced a system called 'Locapass' which works on the principal that if I don't pay my rent, the state will, and then money will be deducted out of my pay at a significant rate of interest until I have paid back the government. I'm happy to use this system as a guarantor for me is a mere technicality since I will always be able to pay my rent. So, I fill out all the forms and sign my life away only to find out that real estate agents and landlords don't accept 'Locapass' because apparently it takes too long for the payments of rent to be made by the government. So the so-called help for foreigners is in fact not helpful at all because it is refused by everyone! Fortunately for me, after a long search I'm able to convince a friend of a friend of mine (who barely knows me) to agree that she will pay up to 6 years of my rent (totaling over 50 000 euros) should I not be able to.

The problem of guarantor aside, here are the other issues one comes across when setting up a life for oneself in France. To be able to rent an apartment, you need to have a copy of a gas bill in your name, and yet to be able to have a gas bill in your name, you obviously have to have an apartment which said gas is connected to. To be able to rent an apartment in France you need to have a French tax return. To have a French tax return you need to have lived and worked in France for at least a year and a half. Where oh where you may have been living (given the fact an apartment is out of the question) for that first year and a half, is apparently not the French's problem - that's for you to figure out. To be able to purchase electrical appliances in France you need to have a gas bill (yes a gas bill to the French is like pure gold!). To have a gas bill you need to have lived in your apartment for 2 months. So apparently you are supposed to live in your apartment with no appliances (such as a fridge - hello a person needs to eat!) for the first 2 months. To be able to open a bank account in France, you need to have a gas bill (I'm not kidding!) and a permanent job. To have a permanent job and a gas bill in France, you need to have a bank account. Sound logical to you?

As a fellow aussie Bryce Corbett puts it in his book 'A Town Like Paris', he believes that this whole process is actually;
'a canny immigration control mechanism - a hidden test of a person's intelligence, enterprise and cunning. If you aren't clever or conniving enough to work out how to wheedle you way
around the system to get a gas bill - if you can't work out the riddle - you have no business
being in France.'

NB. The reason I have not blogged for almost 3 months now is due to another French riddle - apparently it takes the French no less than 2 and a half months to connect a phone line and the internet in one's apartment. After all, if you're lucky enough to have managed to get an apartment, it's a little too much to ask that you should also have contact with the outside world. Apparently instead of communicating with others you should be spending your time sitting in your apartment all day and contemplating just how lucky you are to be in Paris in the first place.