http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6435
If a landlord in France turns down a potential tenant because of his skin color or ethnicity, he can receive a 45,000 euro fine and three years in prison. This is the result of the anti-discrimination agency known as HALDE (High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination) created in 2005 by the French government (at the behest of the EU institutions in Brussels), and advocated by then Interior Minister Nicolas http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5780.
While it is normal to sense the injustice of depriving someone of housing because of who he (she) is, it is equally normal to place self-preservation ahead of any unrealizable Utopian considerations, especially when there are so many precedents that point to the likelihood of increased danger for the residents and a greater possibility of neighborhood decline.
Yet, most people will persist in saying that they http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6503. It’s an issue of an ideal confronting reality. People will always say what they think they are expected to say, but they do what they must.
HALDE uses techniques similar to spying and entrapment to catch the guilty in the act of discriminating. This article from Le Parisien, dated February 27, provides anecdotes, but does not address the underlying problem of immigration:
“Fifteen rental agencies and landlords from Ile-de-France were “set up” last November by HALDE during a “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4860". For the first time in the history of the institution that was created in 2005, HALDE has sent incriminating evidence to the courts for litigation.”The relatively new French word “testing” refers to the entrapment process, where spies are sent to verify that landlords and employers treat everyone equally.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3814