85

By submitting the maintaining and renting of certain types of properties (in particular those subject to degradation) to compliance with quality standard requirements, the rental authorisation pursues the worthy objective of ameliorating the living conditions of the inhabitants. But given the exaggeratedly high hygiene standards, this measure results in the expulsion of numerous poor families, either as a consequence of the necessary increase of rental prices in order to finance repair works, or – in the absence of such works – of becoming inevitable if the authorities decide to declare the dwelling unfit for human habitation by way of a sanction. At the same time the public authorities are under no effective obligation to rehouse those vulnerable people whom it has forced out of these properties.