Metropolitan regions in the United States suffer from high levels of economic and racial segregation, partly as a result of racially discriminatory and exclusionary decisions made by local governments to prevent affordable housing construction in places with greater shares of white and wealthy people.

Although some scholars, lawyers, and policymakers have fought to reverse these trends, such as by promoting affordable housing construction, people with low incomes and people of color still encounter discriminatory and segregating policies when trying to access communities with jobs and well-funded public services.

Housing segregation isn’t unique to the US, however, and US policymakers can look abroad for policy ideas and innovations. France’s Urban Solidarity and Renewal (SRU) law made a splash when it passed in 2000, instituting a national mandate for affordable housing availability. The SRU law’s goal was to reduce the segregation of low-income people in outlying suburban housing developments, or banlieues. As I show in new research published with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the SRU law has been successful in making the distribution of affordable housing more equitable in terms of evening the availability of subsidized units across municipalities, and it could be a model for the US.

In France, social housing, or housing permanently guaranteed by means testing to be affordable for families with low and moderate incomes, is managed by local government authorities, nonprofit organizations, or private-public partnerships. The SRU originally required that most urban municipalities ensure at least 20 percent of their overall housing stock was social housing by 2020. In a 2013 reform, this requirement was increased to 25 percent by 2025 for communities in which more than half of the French population lives.

Read the full article about housing affordability by Yonah Freemark at Urban Institute.