A Meta-Impact Evaluation of Social Housing Programs: The Chilean Case

The Chilean's housing policy and programs are one of the most copied amongst the Chilean policies. The homegrown policy was and is considered a vanguard way of approaching housing problems. This paper presents the findings of a meta-evaluation of Chile's Social Housing Programs. We found that, in terms of affordability and housing quality housing needs, the situation has improved overtime, due to an improving enabling economic environment and sustained public intervention. However, the aggregate figures shroud the problems still faced by households in the lowest two income quintiles and, the opening to home-buying private market to underserved households remains a challenge. In terms of welfare impacts of public housing programs, we found that targeting of the programs to lower income quintiles has improved overtime and the effects on housing materiality outcome indicators are positive and significant in most cases. However, in terms of welfare outcome indicators, the impacts of public housing programs are diverse and non-significant in most cases. Finally, we also found that that the search for the "best" program is misplaced, as revealed by the Chilean case, in which different programs introduced and wound down as the size and type of problems and context changes is the preferred option.