She was Minister of Territorial Equality and Housing (French: Ministre de l'Egalité des Territoires et du Logement) in the Ayrault Cabinet from 2012 to 2014.

[4] Duflot spent her childhood and adolescence in the district of Montereau-Fault-Yonne before returning to her native town, Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in the early 1990s.

That same year on World Water Day, she swam in the Seine in Paris with three other members of the electoral college to denounce river pollution in France and to match Jacques Chirac's promise, when he was Mayor of Paris, to swim in the Seine.

In March 2008 during the municipal elections at Villeneuve-St-Georges, she came in second place on a unified ticket of the PS, the MRC, the PRG and the Greens after socialist Laurent Dutheil.

[15] In 2010, she along with Monica Frassoni, Renate Künast, and Marina Silva were named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers,[16] for taking Green mainstream.

[18] The position of Minister of Housing was offered to her in the Ayrault government of the Hollande presidency, which began in May 2012.

Her first effort, announced 11 September of that year, failed in October,[19] causing embarrassment to the Prime Minister.

[21][22] The loi Alur (Accès au logement et urbanisme rénové) restricted landlord-tenant relations in exchange for favourable financial treatment.