The Ongoing Transformation of Social Housing Finance in France: Towards a Self-financing System?

Abstract

This paper reviews social housing policy transformations in France since 2000. These changes have come to represent a new context characterised by conflict between government budget constraints and intensive demand for social housing due to growing job insecurity and soaring housing prices. The paper begins by outlining the mayor debates on the role of public interventions in the provision of social housing in France. It then focuses on the consequences for the sustainability of new social rental housing which has proved to be more and more oriented toward a self-financing system. Our review argues that although the current annual provision of social housing has not yet declined, self-financing is probably a feature of a transition stage between sustainable growth and the stagnation of the social housing stock. This change poses anew the key question for the French social housing model: whether or not to reproduce the ‘residual’ position being taken by most European countries.