A Better Knowledge of the Assets to Understand the Challenges of the Social Housing Sector

Social housing organisations’ activity and strategy are tightly linked to their stock of dwellings. A proper knowledge of these assets is therefore a necessary prerequisite to understand the sector’s challenges.

As a consequence of a strong construction pace in the thirty-year post-war boom period, today’s average age of social dwellings is high, at 36 years. But beyond the average figures, social housing stock is not evenly distributed throughout the French territory, and its characteristics (such as age, type of dwelling, etc.) vary according to its location. Indeed, the construction of social dwellings has occurred in successive waves, each of which has concentrated in certain regions, following the demographic and economic evolutions in French society. Today’s social housing stock therefore reflects the location and the main characteristics of each period’s buildings.

The current and future dynamics of social housing, both in terms of construction and rehabilitation works, are thus partly determined by the state of the housing stock in each territory, and its adequacy to societal changes.