Building without income mixing: Public housing quotas in France

Pré-publication, Document de travail: We study the effects of the SRU law introduced in France in December 2000 to support scattered development of public housing in cities and favor social mixity. This law imposes 20% of public dwellings to all medium and large municipalities of large-enough cities, with fees for those not abiding by the law. Using exhaustive fiscal data, we evaluate the effects of the law over the 1996-2008 period using a difference-in-differences approach at the municipality and neighborhood levels. We find that the law stimulated public housing construction in treated municipalities, but only slightly increased the presence of low-income households. Indeed, new public dwellings enter categories to which medium-income are eligible and most additional occupants are not poor. Within municipalities, the policy decreased public housing segregation but it barely decreased low-income segregation. This comes from local authorities increasing over time the presence of public dwellings in neighborhoods away from existing public housing but in places concentrating low-income households.

Auteur(s)

Guillaume Chapelle, Laurent Gobillon, Benjamin Vignolles

Date de publication
  • 2025
Mots-clés JEL
R31 R38
Mots-clés
  • Public housing
  • Policy evaluation
  • Construction
  • Segregation
Référence interne
  • PSE Working Papers n°2025-18
Pages
  • 45 p.
Version
  • 1