The elusive quest for social diversity: Public housing, diversity, and politics in France

This paper shows that social housing supply affects population diversity and that electoral incentives matter for the provision of social rental units at the local level. Using a nationwide policy reform imposing on French municipalities to increase their stocks of social dwellings, I find that there is a positive causal relationship between policy implementation, affordable housing supply and social diversity in the Greater Paris region. The impact of the policy is heterogeneous across municipality characteristics. Richer and more politically right-wing oriented municipalities build fewer new social housing units. I provide evidence that electoral incentives can explain part of the impact heterogeneity found. Conservative mayor re-election is threatened by the arrival of new public housing residents with different political preferences as well as by dissatisfaction with housing policy implementation among incumbent conservative voters. The findings imply that local government incentives might affect the implementation of affordable housing policies. This paper contributes to the limited body of evidence on the political economy of social housing provision.