Olympic Games-2028: Los Angeles wants to take inspiration from the athletes' village in Paris

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP 2:46 p.m., March 9, 2024

The mayor of Los Angeles, where the 2028 Summer Olympics will be held, wants to take inspiration from the athletes' village of the 2024 Olympic Games, which she visited on Saturday, to increase social diversity in her city, undermined by a deep housing crisis.

“There will be market-rate housing here as well as affordable housing: it’s an excellent example,” said Mayor Karen Bass, in the heart of the neighborhood being built on the occasion of the planned sporting event. from July 26 to August 11.

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Built in seven years, the village brings together 82 buildings on a site which extends over 52 hectares between the towns of Saint-Denis, L'Île-Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen, north of Paris.

Of the 2,800 apartments planned to accommodate the more than 14,000 athletes, almost a third - or just under 700 - will be available for sale.

The rest will be distributed between social housing, rentals and offices.

The “challenge” of the “housing question”

Unlike Paris, Los Angeles is not building an athletes' village from scratch because, in the summer of 2028, the cream of the sporting world will be hosted on the campus of the prestigious UCLA university.

Mathieu Hanotin, mayor of Saint-Denis, accompanied Karen Bass during her visit to the Olympic village on Saturday.

The city councilor told AFP that Los Angeles elected officials wanted to "take advantage of the Olympic Games to achieve one of their challenges, which is to increase their public transport offering (...), with also a big challenge which is the question of housing to combat the phenomenon of homelessness".

In the Californian megalopolis, some 75,000 people are homeless in the city and its suburbs, according to a census taken in January 2023.