This paper will present the results of a research interrogating the impact of degrading historical housing on residents’ experience, in the centre of a French medium-sized shrinking city. How are the residents affected in their living conditions, what is their experience of urban shrinkage, and how are they impacted in their residential trajectories? I will start by presenting, more generally, the topic of urban shrinkage itself: what does this phenomenon consist of and what is the state of the research (1)? Then I will present my project and the contribution I hope it will bring to the academic debate (2). Finally, I will explain more in depth a part of the results of this project: the role of social capital in the newcomers’ residential trajectory (3).