Conference on the social housing business model

Organised by "Real Estate Group (French)"

Over the past century, France has gradually built its housing policy around an ever-increasing reliance on social housing, as housing deprivation became more widespread in society. Today, the aim is to maintain the old social housing stock by controlling rents, sometimes even requiring the complete urban renewal of neighborhoods, and to continue to develop the new social housing stock in the face of growing demand and falling turnover.

But in the long-term context of shrinking public finances and budgetary competition with other policies requiring heavy and urgent investment, such as national defense, the economic model of social housing is being re-examined in terms of its effectiveness and modalities.

Today, the social housing business model is understood to be that of a "service of general economic interest", in which public and private players benefit from public subsidies in exchange for their commitment to the provision of housing services.interest", in which public and private players receive public subsidies in exchange for their commitment to public policy objectives But it is also the product of the gradual construction over a century of the French housing policy, in its singularity, whose logic asserts itself as the sector grows and structures itself.

This model has worked remarkably well over the last fifty years: today, social housing providers account for 15% of all primary residences in France. How does the balance between a social housing project and the balance of the sector as a whole, which is the basis of the model, work today? How does the sector's long-term trajectory influence the economic logic that governs it? Faced with a growing demand for social housing that is not being met, how can we envisage the long-term future of the French social housing business model? Is it fundamentally a question of financing?

To provide some answers and discuss these issues, the X-Ponts Pierre professional group is organizing a conference on September 22 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm, in person at the Maison des Ponts, 42 rue Boissière, 75116 Paris, or by videoconference. The event will feature two guest speakers, both experts in Housing Policy and Social Housing:

Serge Bossini, Managing Director of ANCOLS, the French national social housing control agency, which monitors and assesses social landlords and social housing policy.

François Rochon, consultant and researcher specializing in housing policy, author of :

Logement : critique d'une politique impossible, 2023, and
La République des HLM, 2024, published by Editions de l'Aube

X-Ponts Pierre, is a professional group of Polytechnique and Ponts alumni working in the real estate sector (a group shared by the two alumni associations AX and Ponts Alumni). It regularly organizes conferences open to all, and publishes books, including one on housing: Le logement, enjeux, crises et mutations, un tour d'horizon, 2023, Presses des Ponts.

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Monday 22 September 2025
18:30 - 20:30 (GMT +1)

Registration deadline : 22nd September

Event organised in person and online

Maison des Ponts
42 rue Boissière
75116 Paris
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Online

10 € Face-to-face: Ponts Alumni or AX members
Free Face-to-face: student members
Distance learning: Ponts Alumni or AX members
20 € Face-to-face: non-members and outsiders
5 € Distance learning: non-members and outsiders