Capacity Building Program on Housing Policy Development in Latin America

Theme: Housing Policy Development for the Latin American-Caribbean Region
Date: Dec. 6-9 (Tue.-Fri.), 2016
Venue: KRIHS

The Global Development Partnership Center (GDPC) of Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS) hosted ｢Capacity Building Program on Housing Policy Development in Latin America｣ from Dec. 6-9, 2016.

Over the four-day event, KRIHS invited to this program ten officials from the National Housing Commission (CONAVI) of Mexico, the Financial Institution for Territorial Development (FINDETER) of Colombia and the National Secretariat for Housing and Habitat (SENAVITAT) of Paraguay, three organizations that KRIHS has concluded memoranda of understanding (MOU) with, as part of strengthening MOU cooperation. Under the theme “Housing Policy Development for the Latin American-Caribbean Region,” the event shared the knowledge and experience gained from Korea’s economic and territorial development policies, as well as the flow of Korean land and housing policies and housing finance and rental policies. The status and challenges of the three participating Latin American countries and the implications of the Korean model were also discussed.

Although the economic and governance statuses of the three Latin American countries were different, the participants brought up 1) the absence of general territorial planning, 2) lack of rental housing policy due to strong inclination to own housing and 3) the need for legal institutional complementation to support policy. On the aforementioned issues, one suggestion made was for Colombia’s FINDETER, as a bank, based on its characteristics, to devise operating plans for solid projects in sustainable and competitive urban construction (700 million USD), symbolic urban construction (650 million USD) and improvement of water resources (600 million USD).

In Mexico, 49 percent of the population do not own their homes and under a plan to provide homes to them, CONAVI mentioned the need to supplement the Mexican legal system and form a government department exclusively for rental housing policy before expanding territory and providing funding to build rental housing.

As Paraguay is enjoying a period of brisk real estate development, participants stressed that the Paraguayan government should use this as an occasion to lead real estate development through information sharing and collaboration with relevant institutions. Such cooperation could be a prime opportunity to achieve development and an economic leap, they added. In particular, the need for provision of housing to a variety of income classes was stressed through raising land value based on a stronger role by the public sector and public rental of government-owned land.

KRIHS then announced that it plans on offering technical and financial support and online classes through capcacity building programs and consultation to boost potential cooperation measures. Through adoption of policy toward public rental housing, program operating methods and incentives, high demand for consultation requests to KRIHS was expected for the sake of raising housing stability for low-income people through the provision of low-priced but quality public rental housing.

In the cosing ceremony of the program, GDPC Director Il-ho Chung said he hoped the knowledge sharing workshop would not be a one-time event, but would instead intensify development through follow-up discussion. He also suggested continued cooperation among Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay and KRIHS, along with Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to connect related operations in expanding joint knowledge and customizing regional policy consulting through triangular cooperation.