New strategy to address the Qualitative Housing Deficit in Latin America and the Caribbean

For decades, housing policy in Latin America and the Caribbean has focused primarily on the quantitative dimension of the deficit—how many homes are missing. Today, however, the region’s housing challenge is predominantly qualitative, accounting for an estimated 78% of the total housing deficit. Millions of households already occupy a dwelling but live in inadequate conditions characterized by structural deficiencies, overcrowding, lack of basic services, environmental vulnerability, and incremental construction carried out without sufficient technical, financial, or regulatory support. This reality is closely linked to informality, urban exclusion, and limited access to opportunities. Addressing this challenge requires a fundamental shift in how housing problems are defined and tackled. Rather than treating new construction as the sole policy response, housing strategies must embrace integrated, people-centered approaches that prioritize housing improvement, rehabilitation, and progressive construction as legitimate, scalable, and transformative solutions. These approaches are essential not only to improve living conditions at scale, but also to strengthen social inclusion, enhance resilience to climate risks, and respond to fiscal and institutional constraints. In this context, the event provides a space for dialogue and exchange among public, private, and multilateral stakeholders to present and discuss the New Strategy to Address the Qualitative Housing Deficit in Latin America and the Caribbean, developed by the Inter-American Development Bank. The strategy offers a shared analytical and operational framework to better understand the magnitude, diversity, and structural drivers of the qualitative deficit, while redefining how success in housing policy is measured—shifting the focus from units delivered to dignity, safety, and long-term habitability. The discussion will examine key structural challenges and promote a common understanding of the strategy’s seven pillars, drawing on practical experiences from across the region. These cases illustrate how coordinated action can address interconnected issues such as informality, limited data and intelligence, restricted access to finance, regulatory and institutional gaps, climate vulnerability, and weak territorial integration. By fostering partnerships and collaboration, the event seeks to bridge strategy and implementation toward integrated approaches to housing improvement and progressive construction.