The "enabling" approach to housing markets promotes fi nancing systems based on family savings, public subsidies and mortgage loans to unleash the potential of individuals and communities to produce and improve dwellings. However, the approach failed to benefi t lower-income households, as they have less ability to generate savings or make mortgage payments. These households are forced to use informal mechanisms to access housing, such as purchasing land in illegal sub-divisions or squatting on public land and incrementally building their dwellings. The present work argues that supporting the incremental housing construction undertaken by poor households through an enabling approach can make a signifi cant contribution to solving the housing problem in Latin America. The paper discusses the challenges and opportunities in executing this new type of programme, which requires coordinating the resources and capabilities of the benefi ciaries with those of the different levels of government and the civil society. While this paper draws on experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, the proposed approach is also relevant in other settings.KEYWORDS government programmes / housing policy / incremental house construction / informal housing / Latin America / microcredit / poverty / urban land development I. FACILITATING ACCESS TO HOUSING MARKETSSuitable shelter is a basic need. As such, universally, housing is considered a "merit good" -a commodity that is intrinsically desirable or socially valuable. In spite of governments' efforts to provide good quality housing to low-income households, conservative estimates indicate that in the year 2000, more than 17 million households in Latin America and the Caribbean were sharing homes, and 21 million lived in inadequate housing conditions. Currently, three million new houses are needed annually to provide proper shelter for newly formed households.(1) These discouraging statistics are the result of several interrelated factors, one being the historic slow growth of Latin American economies, which has meant that they have been unable to generate suffi cient employment opportunities to increase the incomes earned by their populations; this situation has been made worse by a drastically unequal income distribution. (2) Poorly developed public housing programmes have also contributed to the poor results in the sector, as demonstrated in countries with relatively high income levels that fail to provide adequate housing conditions
In the past 25 years social housing programmes in Chile have taken three basic forms. During the military regime the traditional basic housing and a neighbourhood upgrading programme operated, while in 1990 the new democratic authorities added the progressive housing line of action. As there was scope for improving these programmes, a research project was set up with the aim of rst identifying, and then nding, the relative importance of social housing attributes for different types of dwellers. Three surveys were considered in the project: a two-wave Delphi survey to specialists in the eld and a focus group survey to current and potential bene ciaries, in order to identify the most relevant housing attributes, and a stated-preference survey to a sample of ve types of social housing dwellers. With the latter data discrete choice models were estimated, which allowed the relative weight of (and subjective valuation, or willingness to pay for) each such attribute to be determined. The methodological features of the project are presented and its main results are discussed.
To put together a registry of the location of all existing outdoor gyms (OGs) in Santiago, Chile, and establish a profile of the users of these gyms. Methods: All OGs in Santiago located in public spaces were identified and geo-referenced, and an accessibility analysis of them was carried out. A total of 1,023 users of OGs were surveyed (71% men, average age 31.5 years old, SD =16.6), about the frequency of use of OGs, amount of time spent using them, transportation habits, motivation for usage, and their perceptions regarding their own health, among other questions. In addition, each person's neck circumference was measured. Results: There are 1,981 OGs in the city squares, sidewalks and parks, mostly located in poorest areas of the city. Most OG users live less than one kilometer away from an OG. Discussion: In line with international studies, this research demonstrates that OGs have positive collateral effects, as they not only contribute to users to increase their physical activity, but also because they attract people with sedentary lifestyles to make physical activity. This, in turn, might contribute to make urban areas more livable and safer, for they bring new "eyes to the street" and permit to use cities' under-occupied public spaces. Conclusion: The proliferation of outdoor gyms should be regarded as an opportunity for public health policies aimed at tackling the obesity problem and increasing the physical activity of people.
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