The population of social housing stock has been the subject of numerous studies based on qualitative surveys which highlight the processes of categorization, sorting and selection of households, likely to produce discrimination and unequal treatment in access to social housing. As quantitative approaches are rarer, existing research struggles to grasp the relationships between the population of the social housing stock, its structure and the characteristics of demand and allocations. This article proposes an original statistical approach to characterize the population of the social housing stock, and to relate it to the structure of the stock on the one hand, and to the characteristics of applicants and beneficiaries on the other. Tested in six French intercommunities, this methodology firstly shows that the structure of the social rental stock does not fully reflect the population of the social housing stock. Secondly, it reveals that certain applicant profiles are under-represented in allocations overall, in relation to their weight in demand. Finally, it shows that, on an inter-municipal scale, recent allocations continue to house low-income households in priority urban districts, although this is not always explained by the rent levels observed.

Since the early 2010s, four major laws have been passed in France to reform social housing allocation policies. All of them encourage social housing providers to use digital tools to improve the information available to applicants and combat discrimination. These incentives for transparency have led to a proliferation of local experiments. Several cities have opted for applicant scoring, which aims to automatically rank applications according to a predefined weighting system. Initially implemented on a voluntary basis by local authorities, scoring was then made mandatory by the ÉLAN law of 2018. Based on two surveys combining interviews, observations, and documentary analysis, this article shows that the implementation of scoring has so far failed to reduce the risk of discrimination. The lack of implementation can be explained by national and local mechanisms. At the national level, the content of the law is largely undermined by the mobilization of the dominant actors in the allocation policy. To make the reform more acceptable to municipalities and landlords, the legislator introduced a series of provisions that considerably weakened the scope of the text. At the local level, the rating system was quickly and smoothly implemented. However, the implementation procedures attracted a great deal of criticism, which led to its neutralization. Allocation practices remain unchanged, but this should not obscure certain changes underway in the power relations between local actors, notably the strengthening of the position of inter-municipal cooperation.