Julien Salingue will defend his doctoral thesis in spatial planning and urban planning entitled: "Longitudinal analysis (1978-2013) of the French housing system: continuity and disruptions" on January 12, 2024, in the Bienvenüe building, room B017-B020, at 2 p.m.
The jury is composed of:
Rapporteurs:
Marc Dumont, University Professor at the University of Lille
Yankel Fijalkow, Professor of Social Sciences at ENSAPVS
Examiners:
Jean-Claude Driant, Professor Emeritus at the Paris School of Urban
Planning Véronique Flambard, Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of Lille
Arnaud Simon, Senior Lecturer at Paris-Dauphine University (PSL)
Thesis supervisor: Jean-Pierre Lévy, Director of Research at the CNRS
Guest: Manuel Domergue, Director of Studies at the Abbé Pierre Foundation
Abstract:
This thesis is based on the observation that poor housing conditions have persisted over the last 30 years. By adopting an economic approach based on supply, public policy has been unable to respond to successive "crises." An interdisciplinary review shows that few studies address the issue of housing in terms of the joint dynamics of households (residential mobility) and housing (construction-demolition-renovation). Drawing on the concept of filtering processes and the vacancy chains method, our thesis proposes to overcome this obstacle by creating new concepts (social position, function, and demographic profile) that enable a comprehensive and dynamic analysis of the housing system. To this end, we have developed the Housing Systems Analysis (ASHA) model, which simulates the impact of variations in housing supply on the entire system based on household mobility (turnover rates) between housing types (vacancy chains).
This model was used to analyze, in a retrospective, prospective, and experimental approach, the evolution of the housing system over a 35-year period, using data from eight Housing Surveys (INSEE, ENL, 1978 to 2013). Through simple empirical observation, the initial analysis identified the functioning of the current system (2013), which is structured into residential sectors that reproduce the hierarchy of society as a whole. Simulations of the continuation of successive supply policies (between 1978 and 2013) showed that the real break with the system lies in the continuation of the programming logic of the 1977 reform (promulgated in the context of the Trente Glorieuses) until 2013. Far from completely abandoning housing assistance, the reform established a system of subsidized home ownership for the upper, middle, and working classes with sufficient means, to the detriment of low-income households, which are often young.
The prospective analysis simulated the extension of the 2013 system until 2050. The results show its high instability. The collapse of the private rental stock is leading households into early home ownership, which weakens them and excludes them from the system. On the other hand, it reveals strong tensions in the social sector. The ASHA model also offers the possibility of carrying out experimental prospective simulations of alternative housing policies: massive construction of social housing and attempts to build housing with a view to making the system more fluid (adaptation to residential logic). The results do not fundamentally change the organization of the system, which remains highly unequal in social terms. In this sense, they show that solving the problem of poor housing requires recognizing that supply-side policies alone cannot address residential vulnerability caused by the effects of the overall precariousness of society. In this context, an overhaul of the system will likely require a reform that integrates the profound transformations of the current and future social context.