Building social mix by building social housing? An evaluation in the Paris, Lyon and Marseille Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

In France, social housing is perceived as an instrument for promoting social mix. In particular, there is an expectation that introducing social housing into wealthy areas will bring in low-income households and lead to greater coexistence between lower and higher socio-economic groups. However, several factors tend to hinder the pro-mix effects of social housing: financial constraints that reduce the number of new buildings, especially in high-income neighbourhoods; Not in my backyard attitudes in wealthy areas; allocation practices by social landlords who seldom rent dwellings in expensive neighbourhoods to poor households. Previous experiments with social housing have often proved disappointing in their impact on social mix. What about today’s experiments? Has the social housing built in recent times increased social mix? The empirical evaluation we carried out in Paris, Lyon and Marseille shows that recent social housing developments have stimulated social mix but the impact measured is very small.

Keywords:

• Social mix
• segregation
• social housing
• housing policy
• neighbourhoods
• Paris
• Lyon
• Marseille
• France

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For instance, the issue of discriminatory practices in the allocation of social housing—with landlords showing a systematic propensity to channel demand from applicants with specific ethnic or demographic characteristics towards specific areas—seems as significant in the UK as in France (Sala Pala, 2006). It is also worth recalling the Gautreaux case in the United States back in the late 1970s, when the Chicago Housing Authority was convicted of racial discrimination in public housing policy.

2 It should be noted that the proportion of lower-range products (financed through PLA-Iloans) in new constructions went up sharply in the late 2000s. Nationwide, this share increased from 10 per cent in 2000 to more than 20 per cent after 2011.

3 Social housing in France is built by social landlords who own and administer the properties. The investments are financed mainly by the State, by local governments and by private companies. According to the level of funding, these financing bodies gain the right to reserve a quota of dwellings—and are therefore called ‘reserving organisations’. This right allows each reserving organisation to propose its own candidates for dwellings within its own quota. The allocation procedure occurs as follows. For each unoccupied dwelling in its quota, the reserving organisation selects and ranks a set of applications. The landlord’s administrative departments review the selected applications, sometimes with the collaboration of partners (municipality, civil society bodies). The applications are then forwarded to the allocation committee. Each time this committee reaches a consensus, a dwelling is allocated to an applicant household.

4 French social landlords are not alone in employing this strategy. Variants of the same basic strategy can be found in other European countries (cf. Busch-Geertsema, 2007).

5 As pointed out by the French Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Egalité (2011), the existence of such practices is indirectly proven by several studies which bring to light phenomena such as: the concentration of immigrant groups in specific neighbourhoods or buildings; the overrepresentation of immigrants in social housing located in deprived neighbourhoods; poorer quality housing offers to immigrant applicants; longer periods on waiting list for immigrant applicants.

6 The Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (2011) estimated that there were 26 000 non-social housing units acquired by the municipality of Paris and converted into social housing between 2001 and 2010 (12 000 of them after renewal) while 23 000 new social housing units were built during the same period.

7 The quintiles are based on a ranking of neighbourhoods, municipalities and cantons according to the share of a given socio-professional group in the local population. Each quintile consists of a group of neighbourhoods/municipalities/cantons representing 20 per cent of the households in the metropolitan area for a given socio-professional group. The two quintiles of neighbourhoods/municipalities/cantons where senior managers and people in superior intellectual professions are the most represented account for 40 per cent of the households in the metropolitan area headed by a person belonging to this socio-professional group. For the sake of simplicity, in the remainder of this paper we will talk about ‘neighbourhood quintiles’ as a simplified formula instead of ‘quintiles of neighbourhoods/municipalities/cantons’.

8 There is some evidence suggesting that low-income groups take more advantage of social mix when in the proximity of middle-income groups than high-income groups. In this latter case, the social differences are so large that they considerably reduce inter-group dialogue and exchange—consistent with the findings of Atkinson & Kintrea (2002), who observe that the propensity to look for social contact with others decreases as inter-personal differences increase. Also, the wealthiest neighbourhoods often provide few amenities (shops, services, jobs) available to low-income people, so living in such neighbourhoods can be uncomfortable for these groups. Comparatively, middle-class neighbourhoods are often more welcoming. According to Bacqué et al. (2011), one of the most common forms of trans-class solidarity is between middle classes and working classes. The authors consider that the fraction of the middle classes defined more by cultural than by economic capital (such as middle managers involved in artistic activities, social services, education or health) is particularly disposed to develop social relations with people from lower socio-economic groups.