Spatial sorting of African Immigrants in the French Public Housing Market

Abstract

This paper documents the existence of sorting patterns based on region of origin in the French public housing market (HLM). We provide evidence that first-generation African immigrants who benefit from the program tend to live in poorer neighborhoods than their French-born counterparts, once controlled for the broader geographical area of residence. This differential is comparable in magnitude to the one observed in the private rental market, even though the pricing of a public rental is almost uncorrelated with its location characteristics. Whereas we cannot rule out the possibility that this sorting partly reflects the specificity of African immigrants’ housing demand, we mitigate this concern by using information on the HLM offers that were previously rejected by the households and on the households’ declared level of satisfaction regarding their current neighborhood. Given that about half of African immigrants live in HLM (against one sixth of the non-immigrant population), this finding has possibly strong consequences on African immigrants’ segregation and welfare in France.