Alguma Coisa Boa no Socialismo Francês

Among the things European socialism does better than American capitalism is concoct ways to save dying farm towns. Our host that night, Stef, had left a stressful job as an arbitrage trader in Paris and taken a government grant to rebuild the gorgeous farmhouse where we were to sleep. The French gîte system began in the ’50s but took off in the ’80s. Agricultural life had changed. Rural districts were finding it hard to keep young people down on the farm, indeed, once they’d seen Paris. At the same time, the old barns became attractive to foreigners dreaming of their own year in Provence.
France decided to create grants covering a portion of the costs (often considerable) to convert older farmhouses into rural inns. The grants didn’t always go to the farmers who had owned the houses. They went to urban professionals like Stef. The idea appears to have been based on two very French notions, which are (1) that a person can and perhaps ought to radically change his or her life now and then, and (2) that France must not allow British pensioners to buy up all the good real estate. The term gîte really refers to two kinds of inns, a chambre d’hôte, which recalls a B&B, and a gîte, which is for longer stays and larger groups. Casually, gîte covers both.