On Tuesday, the council caused consternation among conservation campaigners when it approved a 22-storey block of student accommodation to be built on a site next to Liverpool's Lime Street stationand the Crown Hotel, which are both Grade-II-listed buildings, and near to the Grade I-listed St George's Hall.
Mr Paes wants to revamp the seedy port area by getting private developers to build accommodation there for the 20,000 journalists who will cover the games.
The interior ministry has sent a couple of thousand police officers to patrol the Turkish border and is planning to build "accommodation centres of the closed type"—a euphemism for prisons for immigrants.
Dries Loontjens, owner of Kasteelhof't Hooghe - a 15-bedroom English cottage-style hotel restaurant on the former front line 3km (two miles) from Ypres - said he had received so many large group accommodation requests he decided to build a new 12-bed hotel on adjacent land.
A Naval Construction Battalion group arrived there on 22 November to build accommodation and amenities.
Near the schools, construction is underway to build accommodation for the teachers needed to run the growing schools.
One pastor argued that he could not afford to build accommodation at his prayer camp, so had no alternative but to use chains to carry out the work God had called him to: As for me, it is something God has given me, so if I could take whoever comes here I would be pleased, but the financial problem.
But universities have been selling off their accommodation and signing agreements with private companies to build higher-end accommodation to attract rich international students.
Please would you lend them permanently to the National Gallery (which would probably have to build suitable accommodation for them, but nothing is impossible)?
A Human Rights Watch researcher, Nicholas McGeehan, called the plan to build new accommodation a "useful step": "We don't want anyone housed in degrading conditions that we still see far too often in the industrial zone.
