The streets of Paris are hardly known for their pristine cleanliness and some areas are distinctly worse than others.
Residents in the Chateau Rouge area of northern Paris are suing the City Hall in a bid to force them to clean up their streets.
Their decision to take legal action comes as a result of months of inaction from the Paris council in response to their complaints about the unacceptable levels of rubbish being dumped on their road each night, by illegal market sellers.
Château Rouge is an area in the eighteenth arrondissement, one of the northern parts of Paris. It has become in recent years a hotspot for people selling pirate DVDs, electrical equipment and knock-off cosmetic products.
The angry residents of Rue Dejean have set up an association called “La Vie Dejean”. They upload pictures and videos to their Facebook page to attest to their neighbourhood having become a “public bin”.
“It's a real disgrace, what is happening at Chateau Rouge,” said one resident, while another resident described it as a “state of asphyxia”.
The group's president Christine Soufflet described the conditions as a “veritable hell”.
She said “the problem with the street vendors seems to be the very last item on the agenda of the authorities.
“We decided to take the matter to court because we believe that the state is not living up to its responsibilities,” she told France 24's Observers.
The lack of police support seems particularly galling to them given that in 2012, Manuel Valls named the area a “priority security zone”.
Any attempts made by the residents to confront the sellers about their actions have been received with aggressive and an often violent response, they say.
They state that the daily presence of the sellers causes: constant congestion of the footpaths, an increasingly aggressive environment and an “unspeakable state of filth”.
Police have began visiting the area in the afternoon but residents who have posted comments on the Facebook page say their efforts are pointless.
“They not do anything to solve the problem because they do not want it to move elsewhere. So, bad luck for us, I don’t have any hope anymore…” said one commenter.
The story of the residents' misery has emerged just a few months after Town Hall chiefs announced a grand plan to turn Paris into a ‘model of cleanliness’.
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