C H A P T E R T E N Housing Policy: LowIncome Households in France INTRODUCTION Housing consumption and investment remain subsidized even in the most liberal countries. In 2001, the United States spent percent of GDP, and France percent, on public aid to housing. | A Companion to Urban Economics Edited by Richard J. Arnott Daniel P. McMillen Copyright 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd CHAPTER TEN Housing Policy Low-Income Households in France Anne Laferrere and David Le Blanc Introduction Housing consumption and investment remain subsidized even in the most liberal countries. In 2001 the United States spent percent of GDP and France percent on public aid to housing. As in other countries the French system is a mixture of many interventions but its three pillars are the construction of public housing direct rental subsidies to households and help to low-income owneroccupiers. The goal of this chapter is not to assess the validity of public intervention whether it stems from the necessity to internalize housing and neighborhood externalities to dampen the market power of landlords or to make up for failures of the housing market. Rather we present in some detail the three main types of French housing subsidies to low-income households contrasting their setting with their US counterparts. The most acute questions raised by each kind of policy are discussed with some empirical evidence when available. Evaluating policy measures one apiece and independently of the rest of the welfare package and institutions could be misleading. The hope is that a partial analysis of concrete yet sufficiently archetypical situations will shed light on more general mechanisms in housing and welfare policies. The chapter is organized as follows. Section is devoted to an overview of the French housing market and policies assessing their comparability with the USA. Section looks at the public-sector housing. In section personal housing subsidies to private-sector renters are discussed. Section presents the current policy aimed at facilitating access to homeownership the PTZ zerointerest loan . Section concludes. 160 A. Laferrere and D. Le Blanc Comparing French and American Housing Policies France and the .
