Inclusive and Intermediate Housing in France: Habitat Inclusif, Shared Living and New Community Models

An older person can need more connection without needing an EHPAD. A disabled adult may want to leave the family home without moving into a traditional institution. Someone living alone may value privacy but also want neighbours, shared activities and greater security close at hand. These situations expose a gap that many long-term care systems have historically struggled to fill: the space between an ordinary individual home and a formally organised care setting.

France has increasingly developed habitat inclusif within that space. It is now a defined part of the country’s autonomy framework for older people and people with disabilities, combining an ordinary principal residence with a projet de vie sociale et partagée — a shared social-life project created with residents. Within the wider France Ageing, Long-Term Care & Community Support system, it represents more than a housing innovation. It reflects a shift towards giving people more ways to organise everyday life outside both isolated living and institutional care.

The model has expanded rapidly. By 2024, 96 departments were engaged in habitat inclusif and the aide à la vie partagée, with 2,281 projects programmed and more than 21,000 older and disabled people expected to benefit. Investment support continued through 2025 and has been renewed again for 2026.

Yet expansion also makes the model more demanding to govern. Habitat inclusif works precisely because it is not an institution. Housing, social participation and any separately arranged care must remain distinguishable. Residents must retain choice. Shared life cannot become compulsory communal living, and a project designed around independence cannot quietly evolve into an unsupported substitute for intensive care. The success of the model therefore depends as much on boundaries, co-production and local partnerships as on the buildings themselves.

Habitat Inclusif Is Housing First, Not a New Category of Institution

French law defines habitat inclusif for older people and people with disabilities who choose a grouped form of housing as their principal residence, accompanied by a shared social-life project.

The housing may take different physical forms. It can involve a shared rented home or a group of independent dwellings within the same building or cluster of buildings, with common space associated with the shared project.

What makes it habitat inclusif is therefore not a single architectural model.

The defining principle is that residents live in ordinary housing while choosing to participate in a collective social environment. The housing is intended to remain a home rather than becoming an établissement social ou médico-social simply because several people with support needs live nearby.

This distinction is fundamental.

If habitat inclusif were treated simply as a small institution, much of its purpose would disappear. Residents could lose control over their routines, social relationships and choice of external support. Conversely, if it were regarded only as ordinary property with no organised social dimension, the shared-life objective would become meaningless.

The model sits deliberately between these positions.

That makes it particularly relevant to wider debates about choice, control and co-production. Residents are not merely occupying places within a service model. They are participants in shaping how shared life operates.

The Projet de Vie Sociale et Partagée Is the Model’s Core Infrastructure

The projet de vie sociale et partagée is central to habitat inclusif.

It establishes how residents want collective life to work while recognising that each person retains a private home and individual rights.

The project may support social activities, mutual connection, use of shared spaces, links with the neighbourhood and practical arrangements for collective life. Its content should reflect the residents rather than being imposed as a standard programme by the housing operator.

A good shared-life project might include communal meals chosen by residents, local outings, cultural activities, gardening, exercise, neighbourhood events or informal opportunities to spend time together.

But participation needs to remain proportionate and voluntary.

A resident choosing not to attend an activity should not be treated as non-compliant. Someone should be able to value the reassurance of living near others while still spending substantial time privately.

The distinction between community and compulsory collectivity is one of the most important quality tests in the model.

That also changes how outcomes should be understood. Success is not maximising the number of organised activities. It is whether people have greater connection, meaningful choice, confidence and participation while retaining control over their own lives.

Operational scenario: Shared living without compulsory togetherness

Six older people occupy independent apartments within a renovated building in a medium-sized French town. There is a shared kitchen and living room, and an animator supports the social-life project.

Initially, the project organiser creates a busy weekly programme. Shared meals are scheduled four evenings a week, alongside organised exercise, games and outings. Most residents participate during the first few months.

One woman gradually stops attending. Staff worry that she is becoming isolated and begin encouraging her more strongly to join activities.

A resident review reveals something different. She enjoys living in the building and regularly speaks with two neighbours. She simply finds large group meals tiring and prefers seeing her daughter or reading in her own apartment.

The response is not to classify her as disengaged. Instead, the shared project becomes more flexible. Large communal events continue, but residents also create informal coffee mornings, smaller activities and opportunities to propose events themselves.

The result is a more genuinely inclusive model. The resident participates on her own terms while remaining socially connected.

The governance lesson is important: participation should be measured through the person’s experience, not through attendance statistics alone. A shared-life project supports autonomy only when residents can also choose privacy.

The Porteur Has a Distinct Role in Making Shared Life Work

Each habitat inclusif has a legal entity responsible for supporting the shared social-life project: the porteur de l’habitat inclusif.

Its responsibilities include developing the project with residents, animating and regulating collective life, organising partnerships, helping ensure spaces are appropriate and maintaining relationships with the property owner regarding communal areas.

The porteur may rely on one or more professionals responsible for animating the project.

This role is different from providing personal care.

An animator can create connections, support residents to organise activities and help develop local partnerships. The role should not automatically become an informal substitute for a home-care worker, nurse, social worker or permanent support staff member.

That boundary becomes more important as residents’ needs change.

If an animator begins routinely managing medication, providing personal care or supervising residents because formal services are absent, the project is drifting away from its intended model.

Organisations developing similar arrangements can use the Governance Maturity Assessment to examine role clarity, responsibility and escalation where housing, community support and care overlap. It does not define French legal duties, but it helps expose the type of boundary failure that can undermine shared-living models.

Aide à la Vie Partagée Funds Shared Life Rather Than Individual Care

The aide à la vie partagée, or AVP, has become a major mechanism supporting the expansion of habitat inclusif.

It finances the shared social-life project rather than an individual person’s personal care package.

Where departmental arrangements provide for AVP, the aid is linked to an agreement covering the relevant housing and is paid to the legal entity responsible for delivering the shared project.

This distinction prevents two different forms of support being confused.

A resident may separately receive APA, disability-related support, health care or services delivered at home. AVP does not replace those entitlements. It supports the collective dimension that makes habitat inclusif different from a conventional apartment.

Typical shared-life functions can include:

• facilitating relationships between residents;
• supporting collective activities chosen by the group;
• encouraging participation in the wider neighbourhood;
• coordinating elements of communal life;
• helping residents develop and review the shared project.

The financing relationship also embeds the department within governance. Development depends on departmental programming and agreements with the CNSA, which co-finances eligible AVP expenditure.

National co-financing has helped accelerate the model. For new programming from 2025 onwards, the statutory CNSA contribution is lower than for the earliest waves of development, increasing the importance of longer-term departmental financial planning as the programme matures.

Departments Have Become Central Architects of Local Development

Habitat inclusif may be national policy, but much of its practical development is territorial.

Conseils départementaux play a central role in programming AVP expenditure, identifying priorities, working with project developers and connecting the model with wider autonomy policy.

This creates both opportunity and variation.

A department with an established strategy may map unmet demand, identify poorly served areas and build partnerships with municipalities, associations, social landlords and care organisations. Another may have fewer mature projects or more limited local capacity.

By 2024, 96 departments were engaged in the national habitat inclusif and AVP framework. This breadth matters because it shows that the model has moved beyond isolated experimentation.

However, national coverage does not mean uniform availability.

The number, type and location of projects differ. Some territories may develop models primarily for disabled adults, others for older people, and others intentionally mix populations. Urban projects face different property economics from rural ones. Local associations and housing organisations also vary in experience.

The governance question is therefore increasingly about the shape of supply, not simply whether a department participates.

Departments need to know which populations are being reached, where projects are located, what demand remains unmet and whether new capacity is connected to transport, health care and ordinary community life.

Investment Policy Is Moving From Experimentation Towards Infrastructure

Habitat inclusif requires more than funding for social animation. Suitable buildings also need to exist.

National investment programmes have therefore supported renovation, accessibility, shared spaces and technology within projects.

More than 300 habitat inclusif projects across 63 territories received investment support between 2022 and 2025. In 2025 alone, the CNSA supported 110 projects through an investment envelope of €7 million. Forty-nine were principally for older people, 58 principally for disabled people and three were designed equally for both populations.

The 2026 programme extends this development, with €10.5 million mobilised across investment streams for older and disabled people. Eligible individual habitat inclusif projects can receive significant capital support for works, while feasibility work is also being encouraged where existing medico-social buildings may be capable of transformation into more inclusive forms of housing.

This matters strategically.

France is beginning to treat intermediate housing as part of future autonomy infrastructure rather than an interesting small-scale alternative.

In late 2025, the CNSA itself argued for a much larger future supply of intermediate housing, illustrating the scale of the policy ambition.

Growth should nevertheless be judged by suitability, not simply volume. Building hundreds of projects in the wrong locations, or creating models with weak social and care interfaces, would increase capacity without necessarily improving choice.

The Housing and the Care Must Remain Distinguishable

One of the strengths of habitat inclusif is that residents retain ordinary housing while arranging any care or support they need through the relevant systems.

That separation protects choice.

A person should not generally have to accept one compulsory care provider simply because they rent a particular apartment. The porteur is expected to create partnerships with social, medico-social, health and community organisations while respecting residents’ freedom of choice.

This can produce a richer support model but also a more complex one.

Within a single habitat, one resident may receive a SAD funded partly through APA, another may have nursing input, a third may receive disability support and another may need almost no formal services.

The shared-life animator is then operating alongside several external organisations.

Clear information-sharing boundaries and escalation routes become essential.

If a resident repeatedly falls, stops eating or becomes confused, who notices the pattern? Who discusses it with the person? When should family, the médecin traitant or relevant services become involved? What information can appropriately be shared?

The answer cannot simply be that everyone is responsible.

Good habitat inclusif governance identifies which organisation holds which responsibility without turning the housing arrangement into a care institution.

Operational scenario: One address, three different support arrangements

A shared-living development contains eight apartments. One 78-year-old resident receives APA-funded home support each morning. A younger disabled resident receives a different support package through disability services. Another older resident has no regular personal care but attends physiotherapy following surgery.

The animator notices that the first resident has become increasingly unsteady and has missed several communal activities.

The animator does not conduct a clinical assessment or increase care independently. With the resident’s agreement, the concern is communicated through the appropriate support route and discussed with her family. Her needs are reassessed, and her home-support arrangements are adjusted.

Meanwhile, the other residents’ arrangements remain unchanged.

This illustrates the essential operating principle. Habitat inclusif creates a shared social environment, but it does not convert everyone living there into recipients of one communal care service.

Individuality survives within collectivity.

If the project instead responded by introducing blanket supervision of all residents, it would begin moving towards an institutional model. If it ignored the change because “care is someone else’s responsibility”, it would create another type of risk.

The stronger approach is a defined interface: notice, discuss, obtain consent where appropriate and connect the resident with the organisation responsible for reassessment.

Co-Production Needs to Continue After the Building Opens

Many innovative housing projects involve residents during design and then become increasingly provider-led once operational.

Habitat inclusif should resist that pattern.

The shared-life project is intended to be built with residents and remain responsive to them.

This means co-production is not completed when the initial project document is signed.

Residents change. New people move in. Interests evolve. A group initially focused on communal meals may later prioritise gardening, cultural activities or links with neighbourhood organisations.

Regular review should therefore ask whether the project still reflects the people living there.

This is closely connected to service-user feedback and co-production, although habitat inclusif should avoid treating residents as conventional service users where the relationship is primarily one of housing and shared community.

The language itself matters. People should be participants in their home and neighbourhood rather than passive recipients of an organised programme.

Shared Living Can Reduce Isolation Without Manufacturing Community

Social connection is one of the strongest arguments for intermediate housing.

Living alone can become isolating when mobility reduces, friends die, driving stops or local services disappear. Shared housing can create informal everyday contact that no scheduled care visit can reproduce.

A neighbour knocking on the door, someone noticing an absence from a normal routine or the possibility of sharing a meal can create social reassurance without formal surveillance.

But community cannot simply be designed into a floor plan.

Residents may have different personalities, cultures, interests, ages and expectations. Conflict can occur. Some people will want greater privacy than others.

The animator therefore needs skills extending beyond activity coordination. Facilitation, conflict management, safeguarding awareness, communication and respect for boundaries all matter.

This places habitat inclusif firmly within the broader objective of independence and community inclusion.

The outcome is not simply that people live close together. It is that proximity creates opportunities for participation without removing individuality.

Mixed-Age and Mixed-Population Models Need Deliberate Design

French habitat inclusif is intended for both older people and people with disabilities, and projects can include residents from different groups or other members of the community.

This creates opportunities to move away from age-segregated or disability-segregated living.

It can also create tensions if inclusion is interpreted merely as mixing people physically.

An intergenerational model needs more than younger and older residents sharing an address. A mixed disability and older-person project needs to understand different communication needs, routines and support expectations.

The strongest projects identify what people genuinely share while preserving individual needs.

A common garden, workshop or neighbourhood programme may create organic relationships. Compulsory “intergenerational activities” can feel artificial.

Good design therefore starts with residents rather than demographic labels.

This is also where tailoring support to the individual remains essential. Collective housing should increase the range of ordinary relationships available to people, not require them to conform to a group identity.

Housing Security and Affordability Remain Fundamental

An innovative social model cannot compensate for insecure or unaffordable housing.

Residents may occupy social housing, private rented accommodation or other eligible residential forms depending on the project. Housing rights and costs therefore remain central to sustainability.

The financial model must distinguish rent and housing charges from AVP and from any individual care funding.

Transparency is important because residents and families can otherwise struggle to understand what each payment covers.

A project may appear affordable during development because capital grants subsidise building work, yet long-term viability depends on sustainable rents, occupancy, maintenance and funding for the shared-life project.

That creates a broader financial governance requirement.

The project needs to remain viable without increasing charges in ways that exclude the very populations it was created to support.

Changing Needs Test Whether the Model Has Strong Boundaries

Habitat inclusif is designed to expand choice, not to guarantee that every resident can remain in the same setting regardless of how needs change.

Some people may live in the model for many years with increasing external support. Others may eventually require a level of continuous clinical or personal assistance that cannot reasonably be delivered within the arrangement.

The challenge is avoiding two opposite errors.

One is premature exclusion: treating any increase in need as evidence that the resident must move.

The other is unmanaged drift: continuing to describe a project as ordinary shared housing while informal supervision and care quietly increase beyond what the model can sustain.

Strong positive risk-taking requires individual assessment rather than automatic thresholds.

A resident developing dementia, for example, should not necessarily need to leave because of the diagnosis itself. The relevant questions are functional: can the person continue living safely with appropriate support? Can they understand and navigate the environment? Is distress manageable? Are other residents’ rights respected? Can external services meet the emerging need?

The Positive Risk Taking Planner can help organisations structure similar decisions around choice, proportionality, controls and review without implying any substitute for French assessment or legal processes.

Operational scenario: Dementia changes the support need, not automatically the address

An 82-year-old resident has lived in habitat inclusif for four years. She has close friendships within the development and participates in a gardening group. Following a dementia diagnosis, her daughter worries that she should immediately move to EHPAD.

The project does not treat diagnosis as an automatic housing decision.

Instead, her actual daily functioning is reviewed. She still recognises her apartment, manages much of her routine and accepts support from a SAD. The environment is made easier to navigate, and neighbours understand how to contact the appropriate support if concerns arise without becoming unpaid carers.

For another 18 months the arrangement remains workable.

Later, night-time disorientation and repeated attempts to leave the building create substantially different risks. External support is increased and alternatives are explored before crisis occurs.

Eventually a move to more intensive care becomes appropriate.

The habitat has not failed. It provided several years of ordinary community life after the onset of increasing need and allowed the eventual transition to be planned rather than forced by an emergency.

This is an important measure of success. Intermediate housing should not be judged by whether nobody ever moves on, but by whether people retain choice and quality of life for as long as the model remains suitable.

Neighbourhood Integration Separates Inclusive Housing From a Closed Campus

Habitat inclusif becomes less inclusive if all meaningful life happens inside the development.

The stronger model connects residents with the surrounding town, village or neighbourhood.

Associations, cafés, cultural venues, sports facilities, shops, transport and ordinary public space matter as much as communal rooms inside the housing.

Local partnerships can help residents participate in existing community activity rather than creating a parallel programme exclusively for people labelled as old or disabled.

This is where municipalities and local associations can have an important role even where the department holds the principal autonomy-policy responsibilities.

Neighbourhood connection also reduces dependency on the animator.

If every relationship depends on one paid professional organising every activity, social life remains service-shaped. A stronger outcome is reached when residents develop independent relationships with neighbours, associations and local businesses.

This connects habitat inclusif with wider community partnerships, although the objective here is not simply organisational partnership. It is membership of ordinary community life.

Workforce Capability Matters Even Though This Is Not a Staffing Model

Habitat inclusif does not normally rely on the staffing structures associated with residential care, yet people remain central to its success.

The professionals animating the shared project need a distinctive combination of capabilities.

They need to understand co-production, group dynamics and community development. They need enough awareness of ageing, disability, safeguarding and changing need to recognise when an issue should be escalated without drifting into roles held by health or care professionals.

They also need the judgement not to over-support.

A professional who organises every meal, resolves every minor disagreement and makes every decision may produce a smooth-looking project while weakening residents’ autonomy.

Workforce quality should therefore be assessed partly through restraint: knowing when to facilitate, when to connect people with others and when to allow residents to solve ordinary problems themselves.

This makes role clarity, supervision and partnership competence as important as the number of hours of animation purchased.

Technology Can Support Shared Housing but Should Not Turn It Into Surveillance

Investment programmes have allowed habitat inclusif projects to incorporate accessibility improvements, home automation, connected devices, adapted lighting and other technologies.

These can improve independence.

A resident may benefit from automated shutters, environmental controls, fall detection or digital access systems. Shared technology can also improve energy management or communication within a development.

But a collective environment creates particular privacy questions.

A sensor introduced to support one resident should not automatically monitor everyone using a shared space. A digital platform used for communal activities should not become a mechanism for tracking attendance or behaviour without a clear purpose.

Organisations planning technology-enabled shared housing can use the Digital Transformation Readiness Assessment to examine governance, workforce readiness, information handling and resilience before technology becomes embedded. The relevant principle is that digital capability should extend autonomy rather than change the home into a monitored environment.

Quality Measurement Needs to Reflect What Habitat Inclusif Is Trying to Achieve

As the model expands, quality measurement needs to mature with it.

Counting projects, dwellings and AVP recipients is essential for understanding national development, but those figures cannot tell whether people experience greater autonomy.

Useful quality evidence should consider:

• whether residents feel they have genuine choice over shared life;
• social participation and meaningful relationships;
• housing stability and affordability;
• resident influence over the projet de vie sociale et partagée;
• access to external care and health services when required;
• safeguarding, conflict and complaint patterns;
• planned rather than crisis-led transitions when needs change.

Some outcomes are necessarily qualitative.

A resident who says, “I have my own home, but I am no longer alone,” may reveal more about the model than the number of activities delivered during the quarter.

At the same time, governance needs enough structured information to identify variation across projects.

The Quality Dashboard Builder can help organisations exploring comparable models combine quantitative and qualitative evidence so that independence, experience, risk and service interfaces remain visible together.

Territorial Planning Must Now Move Beyond Project-by-Project Development

With thousands of projects already programmed, the next phase of habitat inclusif requires more systematic territorial planning.

A programme built mainly from individual proposals risks reflecting where energetic project developers happen to exist rather than where population need is greatest.

Departments increasingly need to consider habitat inclusif alongside résidence autonomie, ordinary adapted housing, home-care capacity, disability provision and EHPAD supply.

That means asking whether intermediate housing fills genuine gaps in local pathways.

A rural department may need small dispersed schemes close to market towns. A dense city may need affordable units integrated into conventional apartment developments. Areas with growing numbers of older people with limited family networks may require a different approach from territories where disability-transition demand dominates.

Transport and workforce availability also matter.

A beautifully designed habitat several kilometres from shops and health services may reproduce isolation in another form. A project relying on external SAD support will struggle if local home-care capacity is already fragile.

The strongest future planning therefore connects housing location with demographic, service and community intelligence.

Scaling the Model Will Test Financial and Governance Sustainability

Rapid development creates a familiar policy challenge: early expansion can be driven by grants and national enthusiasm, while long-term sustainability depends on recurrent funding and mature local governance.

The AVP is now embedded within the financing architecture, and CNSA support has been made permanent. However, co-financing arrangements have evolved as the policy has matured, with departments carrying a greater share for later programmes than in the earliest development waves.

This makes sustainability more important.

Departments need confidence that new commitments can continue beyond the launch phase. Porteurs need viable organisational structures. Buildings need maintenance. Shared-life professionals need stable employment.

Growth without recurrent sustainability could produce projects that exist physically but lose the social infrastructure that defines them.

There is therefore an important connection between national ambition and local fiscal capacity.

Habitat inclusif will become a durable component of French autonomy policy only if its social and financial model remains stable after capital investment and initial programme development have ended.

The International Lesson Is About Separating Home, Community and Care Without Disconnecting Them

France’s model rests on institutions that are specific to its own legal and autonomy system. The département, CNSA, AVP and French housing framework cannot simply be exported to another country.

The transferable idea is the architecture beneath them.

People can live together or near one another without becoming residents of an institution. Shared social support can be funded separately from personal care. Community participation can be deliberately supported without making collective activity compulsory. Care can come into the home while remaining individually chosen.

That combination addresses one of the recurring weaknesses in long-term care systems: the assumption that greater need must mean either increasing isolation at home or entry into a formal facility.

France’s experience also shows that creating the category is only the beginning. Intermediate housing needs legal clarity, investment, recurrent funding, local planning, skilled facilitation and mechanisms for changing needs.

Other systems could adapt those principles without replicating the French mechanism.

Conclusion

Habitat inclusif has moved from the margins of French housing and autonomy policy towards a significant component of the country’s intermediate-care landscape. Its growth across 96 departments, supported by AVP and continuing investment, reflects a wider recognition that people need more options between living entirely alone and entering institutional care.

Its greatest strength is also its central governance challenge. Habitat inclusif is intended to remain a home. The projet de vie sociale et partagée creates community, but residents retain privacy and choice. AVP supports collective life, but it does not replace APA, disability support or health care. The porteur facilitates the environment, but should not quietly become an unrecognised care provider.

Maintaining those distinctions becomes harder as the model scales and as residents’ needs change. That is why future success will depend less on simply counting new projects and more on whether departments can plan supply intelligently, whether residents continue shaping shared life, whether external care remains accessible and whether transitions occur before arrangements become unsafe.

France’s emerging model offers a broader vision of autonomy: not independence defined as managing alone, but the ability to have a private home, relationships, support and meaningful membership of a community without surrendering unnecessary control. If that principle survives expansion, habitat inclusif can become an important part of a more diverse and person-centred response to population ageing and disability.