Exceptional location but very big work to be planned. This is how a real estate agency would describe the building at 1-3, quai de Metz, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. Located at the intersection of the Canal de Saint-Denis and the Canal de l’Ourcq, this eight-storey building with moderate rents and belonging since 1987 to the 3F private group offers a very pleasant view of the Parc de La Villette. Finally, that is when the shutters are not blocked.
This is what happened to Linda, as well as to several other tenants, who has lived in a two-room apartment on the 3rd floor since 2017. “The shutters got stuck in 2018,” she says. We passed all the confinement with the shutters closed and just a bottle of water to keep them a little open. And every time there was an intervention, a month later, they were stuck again. “And in case of heat, impossible to ventilate, even though, dating from 1970, “the accommodations are very poorly insulated”. But if there were only the shutters. Damp blisters appeared in 2018 in his kitchen, on the wall surrounding the water column. In the bathroom, the paint is peeling on an entire section of the wall, while in the toilets, the wall has completely sunk under the effect of humidity. “I can’t take it anymore,” breathes Linda, who doesn’t hide her desire to find accommodation elsewhere.
The Kaoutar family, who live in an apartment on the 1st floor, at the end of the corridor, have been dealing with humidity for years. At this level, it’s not even humidity anymore, it’s downright water. “In 2005, it was so flooded that we called the fire brigade,” recalls the mother, Fatima. “We literally slept in the hallway,” adds his daughter. For the latest water damage, it was not present and as her mother is visually impaired, she had difficulty realizing the extent of the damage. “I felt that it was “floc floc” but as I see very badly, I could not intervene”, testifies Fatima. And you just have to walk on the floor to feel the ripples caused by the water.
More water in the kitchen
As the leaks came from the water column serving the kitchen, it was cut off while waiting for work to replace it. “We have no more water in the kitchen, nor water for the washing machine”, testifies Fatima. The family now uses a bucket to supply the kitchen from the bathroom. And for laundry, it’s off to the laundromat. This is an opportunity to meet the tenants of the upper floors, also deprived of water, but above all it is an additional cost of 35 euros per week according to the estimates of a mother of two children.
Work to replace the water column has started in a higher apartment. A huge hole has been drilled in the kitchen, the sink block has disappeared and debris litters the kitchen floor. “The workers left telling us: ‘I left it clean for you'”, testifies the tenant who went to retrieve her sink unit in the hallway where it had been abandoned. In the meantime, she only has the bathroom sink. Other tenants do have water in their kitchen, but it never gets cold. “I’ve never had cold water in the seven years I’ve been here,” testifies a resident. Souad, faced with the same problem, tried to find out more: “They told us that the cold water pipe was attached to the hot water pipe and that they couldn’t do anything except break everything. »
But all these problems are ultimately trivial compared to what fell on the heads of the tenants when the 3F group decided to add two levels to 1-3, quai de Metz. “Thanks to this, we are creating 13 new social housing units in Paris where land is extremely scarce, as well as 7 others at 9-11, quai de Metz, thanks to the development of the attic on the top floor, explains the lessor. In all, 20 families waiting for social housing can be accommodated. »
Work in progress since 2019
The building permit was submitted in 2018 and work began in 2019. “We were bothered by the Covid-19, then we had problems with a shortage of materials, which means that the work should be finished next March. whereas we had counted on last summer, 3F is justified. And it is certain that carrying out a construction site in an occupied environment creates nuisances and difficulties. ” To say the least.
First, because of the works, the tenants of the 8th floor have been relocated, permanently or temporarily, either in the building or in other buildings of the 3F group. It was also necessary to modify the two elevator shafts to allow them to reach the new floors. The elevators are therefore closed one after the other, except that one serves the odd floors and the other the even floors. Today, only the latter works and for tenants with reduced mobility on odd floors, it is immediately a hassle.
A downpour in the building
But “the bucket of water that broke the camel’s back”, as Souad likes to say, took place a fortnight ago. And it is Joël, tenant of the 8th, who says: “They broke the slab of the terrace but they did not seal it as they went. They covered badly and as it rained, there was a lot of infiltration. On the 8th floor, residents filmed water dripping from the ceiling and falling into trash bags and a dumpster brought by the caretaker. Obviously, this was not enough to stop the water which made its way to the 7th floor.
“Two accommodations of this level were very impacted and we immediately acted by offering them relocation”, explains 3F. This is the case of a tenant who, for four days and four nights, saw water dripping on his electricity meter and who now lives “in boxes” on a lower floor. On the 7th floor, Rose, on dialysis, had the same type of discharge on her meter, leaving her without electricity for a week. To keep her fridge on, she plugged it in via an extension cord to a socket in the hallway, but left her front door open 24 hours a day. Joël expects 3F to redo his 8th floor apartment which was devastated by the waters. In any case, he will not find his curtains which were used by the workers to mop up the puddles of water.
The soft sound of jackhammers
In addition to the infiltrations, the tenants must also support the pneumatic drills which break the terrace. “It’s continuous from 8 a.m., sometimes before, at 5 p.m., or even later with just a break for lunch,” says Souad, who recorded the disturbances on his phone. Moreover, according to her, since the work “cracks have appeared on the walls and on the pillars in the garage”. Upstairs, at the end of the single corridor, a crack at least three millimeters wide frames the back wall.
At the end of the day, the tenants called in a bailiff to come and see the damage and put pressure on the lessor. For his part, he assures “not to leave the tenants abandoned”, to have made “a financial gesture via rent discounts for all the tenants affected by the works” and promises “further monitoring of the problems of the residence “. “When requests are made, they are fulfilled,” says 3F. On site there are guardians of the managers. The inhabitants themselves say that they never see the managers and that all their requests are referred to the guards who are struggling to cope. Finally, the town hall of the 19th arrondissement says it is following the file but recalls that its power of intervention is limited by the fact that it is a private social landlord, while Ian Brossat, assistant to Anne Hidalgo in charge of Housing indicates that it wants to “solicit the 3F group”.