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Paris fires unmask La Belle France

In the past four months, 48 men, women, and children - African immigrants living in substandard Paris buildings - have been killed in three separate fires. Echoing the heat wave that killed 15,000 elderly people two years ago, the tragedies have raised questions about French society`s indifference to the plight of its more vulnerable members, and pointed up racist discrimination against immigrants seeking apartments. The government estimates that 200,000 people in the Paris region are homeless, sleep wherever they can find a bed, or live in temporary shelter. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, moving to address the crisis, announced Thursday that the government was ready to hand over land that had been set aside for Paris` failed 2012 Olympic Games bid if it was used for low-cost housing.

The problem, though, is much larger, say housing experts. As private rents have shot up in recent years, more and more Parisians have come to rely on a limited stock of government- subsidized public housing. Last year, according to City Hall, 102,000 families were chasing 12,000 subsidized apartments. That means scandalously long waits for hundreds of thousands of people, and the darker your skin, the longer the wait: Nearly 30 percent of immigrant applications had been pending for more than three years in 2000, a government study found, twice the overall average. Some of the 17 people killed last week by the fire that destroyed a building providing "provisional" housing had lived there for 13 years.

When provisional housing runs out, the authorities put people in run-down budget hotels, like the one that burned down last April, killing 24 people. Other families take matters into their own hands, and squat in empty and abandoned buildings, many of which have makeshift electricity connections and no running water, like the one that caught fire last Monday night, killing seven people. Nearly 1,000 buildings in Paris have been classified by the city housing department as unsafe and unfit for human habitation. The tenement that burned on Monday was one of them.