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Urban policies implemented in Delhi provide an example of direct involvement by the public sector in the construction of housing, illustrated by the construction of apartment blocks by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). Analysis of the way in which this segment of the public housing stock was constituted and of the inhabitants’residential patterns allows us to examine several issues relating to residential dynamics: strategies for becoming property owners given the specific restrictions on localisation choices; investment strategies relating to rental and speculative properties; the movement between ownership and tenancy in residential trajectories; reaction of households to planners’initial projects and to their defects. In order to understand better households’ residential practices and their interface with urban policies, this study concentrated on two peripheral zones in which the DDA built a large number of blocks of flats, with particular emphasis on reactions in the local neighbourhood.