Constituency Lost: How the Marginalization of Social Housing Residents Undermines Partisan Incentives for Its Provision

Rising rents have renewed interest in social housing across Europe, yet new construction has stagnated. We argue that this decline reflects compositional changes among social housing residents that weakened the political coalition that once sustained public housing and reduced left-wing parties' electoral incentives to provide it. Combining full-population registry, election, and survey data from Denmark, we show that social housing residents have become economically marginalized, while left-wing electorates have grown more affluent and educated. Consistent with this divergence, support for the Social Democrats declined in precincts with high concentrations of social housing, and the party ceased to be electorally rewarded for its expansion. Using a regression discontinuity design and data from all local elections and housing permits, we show that municipalities once approved more social housing under Social Democratic control. This partisan effect vanished by the mid-1990s. Our findings highlight how beneficiary composition shapes the political sustainability of welfare programs.