Abstract

This article analyzes the two most common explanations for the deterioration of co-owned buildings in France: a collective «abdication» of property; the cumulative effect of individual decisions or failures. It also questions why the State’s efforts to solve this problem have not only failed, but often aggravate it. It highlights the logic of collective dispossession that leads to what we can call a «spiral of abandonment». As we will see, this logic is primarily the result of the law itself, which does not encourage collective management of co-owned buildings, as it is based on an individualistic conception of ownership. Secondly, it is the result of public policies that encourage low-income households to buy their own property without offering them sufficient protection. Finally, and paradoxically, it also results from the fact that public intervention procedures, in run-down co-owned buildings, deprive owners of the power to act that they have built up through the appropriating of co-ownership law. We will shed some light on these processes on the basis of a secondary analysis of data collected in different fields at two separate times. The initial surveys carried out in the 1990s, focused on co-owned properties in difficulty awaiting public help. The most recent survey, conducted in late 2010, concerned a co-owned property which had been the subject of the measure most typical of this policy – the safeguard procedure