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

Carolina Rago Frignani
Urban planner graduated at the University of São Paulo, and a collaborator with the Laboratory of Housing and Human Settlements, with experience in the housing departments of the municipalities of São Paulo and Osasco. LabHab FAUUSP – carol.frignani@gmail.com

Eduardo Rojas
Urban planner, lecturer at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, and a former Principal Housing and Urban Development Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank  – eduardorojasarq@gmail.com

Higor Rafael de Souza Carvalho
Brazilian urban planner with master’s degrees in Geography from the Université Paris 1 Sorbonne and Urban Planning from the University of São Paulo – higorrafael@gmail.com

João Sette Whitaker Ferreira
Docente da FAUUSP, autor de diversos livros e ex-secretário de Habitação do Município de São Paulo. LabHab FAUUSP – whitaker@usp.br

Ligia Santi Lupo
Architect and urban planner with experience in managing slum urbanization processes, and a master’s student at the University of São Paulo, studying housing improvements in self-built houses in precarious settlements – ligialupo@gmail.com

Entrevista publicada na revista Environment & Urbanization, do International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), v.32, Issue 2, outubro de 2020, p.333-350.

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.