FOR AND AGAINST

Calino suddenly discovers that he has nothing to defend himself with. He rushes into a bazaar and buys a nasty little knife. When he gets home, he realizes with astonishment that he had a revolver in his pocket... He had forgotten that he had this revolver!....

We all do, without realizing it, what Calino does. We demand, we vote, all the time, laws to defend ourselves. Now, if we take the trouble to rummage in our pockets at least in our code we would find in our code laws already ready, weapons already loaded... Only, we never want to use the laws that we possess. We prefer to order new ones, from the legislative armourers... And then, as soon as we are in possession of the new ones, we let them fall masterfully... fall into oblivion...

We are in the process, it seems, of arming ourselves against furnished accommodation, which is one of the most direct causes of the housing crisis; against furnished accommodation which is the opposite of the home and the opposite of urban planning; against furnished accommodation which increases tenfold when it does not go further and stronger... the price of rents and which means that a rickety bed and a dressing table bring in three thousand francs of income, if not ten thousand, to certain traffickers.

Wanting to defend ourselves against such a scourge is obviously a great idea... We must defend ourselves. It is necessary, while respecting the old rights of honest and professional furnished accommodation owners because furnished accommodation is still necessary in a capital, it is necessary to put an end to this disastrous proliferation of clandestine or admitted furnished accommodation which risks turning Paris into a colossal one-eyed hotel, where it will no longer be possible to live other than on a short-term basis...

So we are going to make a good law?... So we are currently discussing it in Luxembourg?... So we are being told frightening and scandalous facts? So in the last four years, fifty thousand new furnished accommodations have opened in Paris?... It's really a nice mushroom surge!... So, are we going to make a law, a nice law, a harsh law?... Are we going to stop the mushroom surge?... That's very good...

Only, if we had a bit of memory, we would remember that it was almost three years ago that we decided to crack down on furnished accommodations... We would remember that a law, a nice law, supplemented by imperative and administrative decrees, prohibited the furnishing of all previously unfurnished apartments and dwellings...
There is already a harsh law... Unfortunately, the law has not prevented fifty thousand furnished accommodations from springing up in Paris... We have kept the law in our pocket...

Are we going to have another one?... Why do that?...

Maurice Prax.