Human victims of French bureaucracy

The 45 people who have died in the Paris fires that have, over the past four months, torn through three rundown hotels and apartment blocks housing mainly immigrant families are essentially the victims of decades of inadequate housing policy - and of French bureaucracy, writes Jon Henley in Paris.

Of the more than 1,000 buildings identified by Paris city hall in 2001 as posing a health risk to 13,000 inhabitants (423 of them in "exceptionally bad condition"), some 550 have since been bought by city housing associations and nearly 300 are in the process of being renovated.

Since his election in 2001, the city's mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has allocated 152m euros to a plan to clean up (or pull down and rebuild) the worst buildings. The state has provided a far more modest 7m euros over the same period.

After years of inaction, matters are, slowly, improving - despite the best efforts of property developers and owners who often try to block council purchase orders so as to profit from a Paris property market undergoing a spectacular boom.

guardian.co.uk / Europe