Lise Fourdrignier – Long-term vacant private housing in France: landlords and public policy

In 2023, more than one in twelve homes in France stood vacant. Within this stock of 3.1 million unoccupied homes, there is a wide variety of physical, legal and geographical circumstances, reflecting a growing, complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Among these situations, long-term vacancy is of particular concern to urban public policy: it is viewed as a symptom of a malfunction in local property markets. Consequently, the reactivation of a stock of housing that is, in principle, unused is an objective that serves not only public housing policies, but also public policies on land use, urban planning and the ecological transition. However, public policy in this area remains in its infancy and has not yet stabilised. Despite the deployment of a wide range of instruments drawn from public housing and settlement policies since the 1990s, public and quasi-public bodies face the challenge of effectively tackling long-term vacancy. Among the identified obstacles, the difficulty in engaging landlords appears to be the central challenge, highlighted in both academic and institutional literature. However, although understanding the motivations behind landlords’ actions appears crucial to supporting the re-occupation of vacant dwellings in the private housing stock, these motivations remain understudied. This thesis therefore aims to examine the phenomenon of long-term residential vacancy, viewed as a process of devaluation of private housing, by analysing both public policies and the recipients of such measures. Whilst housing is increasingly regarded as a commodity, or even an asset, due to the restructuring of the welfare state towards an asset-based welfare regime, how can we explain the rise in long-term vacancy – which varies across different regions – as well as the difficulties in engaging property owners with a view to bringing their properties back into use? Through a comparative study of sites in rural and metropolitan contexts, three areas are investigated. Firstly, we examine the relationships between owners, vacant dwellings and public policy, by exploring the perceptions of residential vacancy and the behaviour of owners that shape this emerging public policy. Secondly, we consider vacancy as a spatially heterogeneous phenomenon, integral to processes of valorisation and devaluation at the territorial level, which influence the socio-demographic profile of owners, patterns of residential vacancy and the potential for re-occupation. Thirdly, we analyse vacancy by situating this transitional situation within owners’ residential and property strategies: the aim is to understand how long-term vacancy challenges and reshapes the social logic of property ownership.