[pwperl]

I am also an American living in Paris, and while I would agree with you that you can find affordable places, as well as different ways to save money here, the fact is that rents are going up significantly each year. An area like Père Lachaise that would have cost €750/month for 30m2 4 years ago, now costs about €1000/month for the same surface area. I wouldn't say this is due to the so-called 1% (after all, combining several tiny apartments to build one big one is quite rare). I chalk it up to the bobo-fication of areas in East Paris while the west gets gobbled up by the super rich.

I ended up moving to Bagnolet, 500m from the périph (beltway). As soon as your area code changes from 75 to 93, prices often fall by half. Because of the '75 or bust' mindset here, lower earners like myself will be forced to seek a place outside of Paris. But that's not necessarily bad because in the Paris metro area, values are based more on the beginning of your postal code as much as they are on proximity. So while the 93 is associated with a ghetto communist suburb, it affords people like me the ability to take advantage of Parisian stereotypes and score a great deal.