Public Housing: Le Pen Puts National Preference Back on the Agenda

In Hénin-Beaumont on Sunday, 13 September, Marine Le Pen made housing the focus of her presidential campaign launch. But behind her proposals on construction, homeownership and environmental standards, a much older idea immediately reignited controversy: giving French citizens priority for public housing.

“We will guarantee all French people a natural and just right”, the Rassemblement National (RN) candidate declared, asserting that the French, “regardless of their skin color or religion, their origin or place of residence”, would be “given priority in their own country”. She said she wanted to “give French people priority access to public housing” and also reserve housing benefits (APL) for French citizens.

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The choice of words is not insignificant. For decades, “national preference” was one of the ideological hallmarks of the National Front and later the RN. The terminology has changed: “preference” has given way to “priority”. The principle, however, remains a hierarchy of rights based on nationality. The nuance is nevertheless important: speaking of “priority” means that foreigners would not necessarily be denied all access to public housing, but would be placed behind French citizens when multiple applicants meet the eligibility criteria.

Today, the RN emphasizes this distinction. It does not propose automatically deporting foreigners currently living in public housing, nor excluding them from the public housing stock solely on the basis of their nationality. The proposal would apply to new allocations: where applicants are otherwise equally eligible, French nationality would confer priority. The evictions mentioned by Marine Le Pen in Hénin-Beaumont specifically target “delinquent families” and not foreigners as such.

A Break with the Republican Model?

The left and civil society organizations immediately denounced the measure as racist or xenophobic. Emmanuelle Cosse, president of the Union sociale pour l’habitat, called it a “xenophobic whim” and accused Marine Le Pen of singling out immigrants as scapegoats for the housing crisis.

But the debate extends beyond moral arguments to questions of legal principle and social reality. The French Republic does not consider nationality to be an illegitimate criterion in all areas. The right to vote in national elections is reserved for French citizens, while access to certain public-sector jobs remains subject to nationality requirements. Social welfare law includes restrictions based on nationality or immigration status: for certain benefits, the law imposes additional requirements on foreigners regarding length of residence or legal status.

The concept of universality also presents a political paradox. Universal family allowances, long considered a pillar of French family policy, have gradually been called into question by the left since 1998. Since 2015, these allowances have been adjusted according to income. In other words, the principle of differentiated redistribution based on families’ economic situations has ultimately been accepted.

Yet when eligibility for a program is determined by nationality, that same principle of universality becomes, for part of the left, inviolable – almost a sacred mantra: French citizens and foreigners must be treated equally.

Access to public housing, meanwhile, is not currently reserved for French citizens. A foreign national with legal status may submit an application, provided they hold one of the required residence permits. The principle of national priority would therefore mark a significant change in how housing is allocated. But it would not necessarily be legally impermissible: the Constitutional Council acknowledges that the legislature may treat different situations differently, provided that the difference is directly related to the purpose of the law.

The country's housing shortage makes the issue particularly significant. France had approximately 2.7 million unmet applications for public housing in 2024, while only about 85,000 public housing units were approved that year – a figure more than 30% lower than in 2016. The problem is therefore primarily one of scarcity: there are far more applicants than available units.

A Social Housing System Under Strain

The immigration debate intersects with France's shortage of public housing. Official data clearly show that immigrants are overrepresented in public housing. In 2022, 30% of immigrants living in conventional housing (self-contained homes or apartments) were tenants in public housing, compared to 11% of non-immigrants. The proportion reached 44% for immigrants from the Maghreb. However, a distinction must be made between immigrants and foreigners. Not all immigrants are foreigners: some have acquired French citizenship.

For Julien Odoul, an RN deputy, the conclusion is equally clear: “Today, the saturation of the social housing stock is primarily linked to immigration.” The shortage of new construction, low tenant turnover and the concentration of demand in already high-pressure areas are making the situation even worse.

The same debate arises in the context of student housing. For several years the student union La Cocarde has been calling for French citizens to get priority in student accommodation administered by the centres régionaux des œuvres universitaires et scolaires (CROUS). It cites 2022 figures showing that 30% of places go to international students on average, and as many as 45% in some locations.

The debate goes beyond whether foreigners receive “preferential treatment”. It centers on the allocation of scarce resources in a country where the demand for social housing is growing faster than the supply. The case for national priority does not rest on foreigners making up a majority of public housing tenants. Rather, it asks whether nationality should determine priority when housing is scarce.

Who Should Come First?

The housing issue also touches on a broader obstacle in French politics: the difficulty of reforming what its defenders call the French social model. France spent €932.5bn ($995.6bn) on social protection benefits in 2024, representing 31.9% of its GDP. At the same time, disparities in employment rates remain significant: in 2024, 69.8% of non-immigrants aged 15–64 were employed, compared with 62.4% of immigrants from countries outside the European Union.

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Based on these figures, the left refuses to acknowledge a glaring contradiction in its reasoning: one cannot simultaneously claim that foreigners are overrepresented in public housing because they have low incomes and argue that they contribute massively to the system. If foreigners have a lower employment rate than the French – as national statistics suggest – their participation in the labor market alone does not demonstrate that they are indispensable to financing the system.

A model based on extensive redistribution must necessarily examine its balance between contributors and beneficiaries, especially as France’s demographics deteriorate and the aging population places an increasingly heavy burden on pension and healthcare spending.

The political divide is therefore clear: a segment of the left rejects any distinction between French citizens and foreigners in the name of the universality of social rights, whereas the RN counters that national solidarity must first and foremost benefit those who belong to the national community.

Yet the dispute ultimately comes down to a practical question: when resources are limited, when millions of households are waiting for housing and when social protection accounts for nearly one-third of GDP, the question of who should be prioritized cannot be resolved through condemnations or accusations of “Pétainism” against those who ask the right question.

The national priority is precisely the RN’s answer to this question. The accusations of racism leveled against the party sidestep the fundamental question: the material limits of solidarity and whether a redistributive system can remain acceptable as resources become more constrained.