November 1 marked the beginning of France’s annual winter ban on housing evictions, which ends on March 15. The measure is iconic of France’s highly protective housing laws, which make it particularly difficult for landlords to evict tenants who can’t pay their housing bills.

Charitable groups representing homeless people hail the measure as one which protects tens of thousands of crisis-stricken families but stress that the total number of evictions in France rose by 150 percent in the past 10 years to reach a total of 11,294 registered evictions in 2008.

On Saturday, the rights group “Jeudi Noir” (Black Thursday) squatted an empty private townhouse on the elegant Place des Vosges in central Paris to mark the beginning of the winter ban and protest the number of disused real estate space in the French capital.

“It’s scandalous that properties like this remain empty for years”, a protester told Agence France Presse. “Sleeping here, even temporarily, could get a homeless person off the cold streets,” he added.

According to the Abbé Pierre Foundation, named after a French Catholic priest who devoted his life to securing better housing conditions for poor families, there are more than 1.8 million families in France who struggle to pay their housing bills. At least 500,000 of them owe one or several belated monthly rent payments.

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