Influences
- Import-substituting industrialization is practiced throughout the region.
- Governments intervene to generate economic growth.
- An urban, industrialized class emerges.
1950s-1960s
Influences | Policies and Programs | Institutional Roles | Methods, Tools, and Practices | Lessons and Outcomes
Summary
MORTGAGE BANKS & INSTITUTES.
Constitutions recognize housing as a social -not economic- good, Governments develop state institutes and mortgage banks focused on the provision of social housing. Governments also manage housing policy, financing and planning with little private sector involvement.
Policies and Programs
- In El Salvador, the Institute of Urban Housing is created to finance and construct housing for low-income families.
- Panama establishes the Institute of Housing and Urban Development to encourage housing construction and urbanization.
- In Ecuador, the Institute of Social Security develops housing projects for its affiliates and offers 25-year fixed-rate mortgages.
Institutional Roles
- Uruguay establishes the National Mortgage Bank (BHU) in 1892 as a social development bank; it dominates housing policy over the next five decades.
- In Argentina, the National Real Estate Mortgage Bank grants nearly 400,000 loans in one decade, contributing to the expansion of the suburbs.
- In Chile, with the birth of the National Housing Corporation, the first long-term plans to solve housing problems are developed.
- The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the oldest and largest regional bank in the world is founded in 1959.
Methods, Tools, and Practices
- Brazil constructs the first multi-family group houses between 1930 and 1945.
- The Central Mortgage Bank of Peru uses mortgage certificates as a tool to facilitate housing finance.
- Shantytowns or "barriadas" are formed in Peru through overnight land invasions of unoccupied land on the fringes of cities.
- John Turner's Upgrading program emerges in Peru as an affordable alternative to clearance and relocation.
Lessons and Outcomes
- Progressive housing policies, where housing is financed and built over time, are successful.
- State Mortgage Banks target the poor, but ultimately provide mostly middle and upper class mortgages.
- Failure to anticipate and acknowledge informal housing leads to insufficient formal housing supply.