Immigration and housing: rethinking the role of fiscal policies to manage diversity

Abstract

We study the two key social issues of immigration and housing in light/nof each other and analyse which housing policies work best to distribute/ndiversity (racial, economic, cultural) equally across our cities and towns. In/nparticular, we compare the impact of direct government expenditure and/ntax incentives on the housing conditions of immigrants in four European/ncountries: France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The analysis/nshows that the different policies which have been adopted in these countries/nhave not succeeded in preventing immigrants from being concentrated/nin certain neighbourhoods. The reason is that housing benefits and/ntax incentives are normally “spatially blind”. In our opinion, governments/nshould consider immigration indirectly in their housing policies and, for/ninstance, distribute social housing more evenly across different areas to/npromote sustainable levels of diversity.