Housing policies and the roles of local governments in Latin America: recent experiences

Abstract

In the last few decades, most Latin American countries have made good progress in improving the living conditions of urban populations, but still face enormous challenges. This paper describes the roles of city and other local governments in designing housing policies and integrating them into governance, planning and finance. This includes many innovations in local governments’ housing policies, especially those implemented in the first decade of this century by progressive city governments. It also includes decentralization that supported municipal governments to develop their housing and urban development plans. Relevant as well are policies to address the quantitative deficit (insufficient supply of housing) and the qualitative deficit (inadequate quality of housing), such as informal settlement upgrading. The paper includes examples of where housing policy decentralization created spaces for democratic, participatory and inclusive city governance. It also highlights the importance for social housing of finance and the measures that may be taken to address this, including land management instruments and capture of real estate surplus value. But much of this innovation has been lost over the last decade, after the economic crisis and the rise of a new wave of conservative regimes in the region.