The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

With a master’s degree in urban planning and a PhD in anthropology, Adriana Hurtado Tarazona has long been fascinated by the intersection of human behavior and urban form—especially how and where people choose to live. After receiving a graduate student fellowship from the Lincoln Institute’s program on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), she spent years studying social housing megaprojects on the outskirts of Colombia’s cities, speaking at length with the people who lived in them to learn how they experienced their community and built environment.

Today, Hurtado Tarazona is an associate professor of planning, governance, and territorial development at the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies (CIDER) at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. “I teach an introductory course on land planning instruments, so I’m still talking about what the Lincoln Institute taught me back in 2005, when I went to a course in Quito,” she says.

In this conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Hurtado Tarazona discusses why housing ought to be a social policy versus an economic one, shares some of the surprising sentiments she’s heard from residents of social housing, and explains why paying people to upgrade existing homes may be a better solution than subsidizing new homebuyers.

JON GOREY: What is the general focus of your research, and how did your Lincoln Institute fellowship support that work?

ADRIANA HURTADO TARAZONA: I received the fellowship for my master’s thesis in 2006. I was doing an analysis of the impact on land values of some of the BRT infrastructure in Bogotá —the TransMilenio. It was one of the first studies; at the time, the TransMilenio had only four years of implementation, so it was very new. I was trying to document the changes in the urban space around the two big stations, from the perspective of the land market and from the perspective of the residents of the area.

It was very nice to be in that program, because I got to meet a lot of the professors linked with the Latin America program. I loved the experience. And three years ago, one of my students got the same fellowship that I got almost 20 years before. So it was really nice to now be in a different position, sponsoring my student, and she got to live the benefits of that fellowship.

JG: What are you working on now, and what are you hoping to work on next?

AHT: Right now I have four research projects—two of them are related to the main topic of my PhD thesis, which is social housing, specifically the production and urban expansion of social housing megaprojects in urban borders. One project, which we are finishing this year, is called vertical peripheries, with York University in Toronto. We analyze the subjective impact of living in the periphery, but also the impacts on urban planning and governance of this metropolitanization process, where the social housing overflows the urban limits of Colombian cities. The other one is focused on the economic impact of access to social housing. So we are going to analyze specifically how women-led households have to change their domestic economies to keep up with the costs of accessing homeownership for the first time.

The third one is the care infrastructure project, led by the University of Washington in Seattle. It’s a comparative project between Belfast, Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and Bogotá. We are trying to analyze stories of urban change in general, and specifically, in Bogotá, we are analyzing how care became a focus of urban policy, which was not the case until very recently, and we are analyzing the birth of the district CARE system as urban infrastructure. We have these new regulations that understand care infrastructure at the same status as water, sewage, and roads, which is very interesting, and we are trying to document how that could happen, under what conditions did that happen?

And another thing I’m doing with the Lincoln Institute is a small research grant from last year. The main researcher is from Brazil, and along with Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, we’re trying to do a comparative analysis of interventions that try to support densification.

JG: What’s something surprising or unexpected you’ve learned in your research?

AHT: I have been asking people if they’re happy with their homes, in general, and the first surprise was from an urbanistic perspective. Local urbanists are very critical of these peripheral, massive, standardized, social housing megaprojects, because they are far away from the city, disconnected, with problems of accessibility. I knew all that, and I came to the fieldwork with this very critical perspective.

But then I sat with people, and the first thing they told me was, ‘No, I love this. I love the order. I love that everything is standard.’ Everything that urbanists see as the ‘unlivable city’ and the ‘nonplace,’ the people were saying, ‘No, I like this because it’s planned, it’s orderly, it’s clean.’ That was the first thing that surprised me.

And it surprised me more because they had lived before in self-constructed houses where they had more space, more flexibility of spaces, and they were better located in the city. But then when I spent time with them, I started realizing that this is part of the trade-off people make, because the housing market didn’t allow them to buy anywhere else, and they prioritized homeownership in the formal city over the time they had to spend in transport, over being close to family, to friends, to networks of support.

They knew what they were losing, but this was part of a very conscious trade-off: I am losing this, but I’m gaining this. And the thing they were gaining was the stability of their own home, even if it was small, far away, and very expensive. And that has a lot to do with the opportunities that this country gives to people for social mobility, which are narrowly focused on having access to property. Being part of the new middle class in Colombia means primarily having your own home in the formal city, not in the informal neighborhoods.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

AHT: What worries me is that housing policy in Colombia—and I think this is the case in other countries also—follows the logic of real estate agents, that the only way to solve the housing problem is to build new housing and sell it to low-income households with subsidies. But we also have lots of alternatives and lots of different ways to address the housing problem.

In Colombian cities, including Bogotá, the qualitative housing deficit is three times more than the quantitative housing deficit. So that means three times more households need better housing and not new housing. But our housing policy gives all the resources and all the attention to building new housing. Neighborhood housing upgrade programs exist, but they don’t have enough budget, they don’t have enough attention, and they are not seen as the legitimate way to solve the housing problem.

So what I really wish we would do is to change the focus and to start paying enough attention and giving enough resources to upgrading what we already have, the built city. It would be environmentally better, economically better for people. There are a lot of advantages, but of course, it’s a slower process. It doesn’t show lots of big numbers, and it doesn’t follow the interest of these real estate and financial sector agents.

What gives me hope is that we have some interventions that are showing good results. One of them is the support for densification in informal-origin neighborhoods. These are programs that recognize that there are neighborhoods of informal origin, with self-constructed homes, that are older, they have good locations in the city, they already have access to the urban goods and services and infrastructure, but they need support to grow in height.

So we have a program here that offers help in structural reinforcement, and they offer subsidies for people to build a second floor on their houses, and then that new unit they could use to live in, if they are crowded, or they could rent it to other households, so they have a new source of income. I think it’s a really innovative program, because at the same time, it ameliorates housing availability and the structural security of the houses, and also gives low-income households the opportunity to have new income from these new units.

The state is supporting a thing that will happen anyway, with or without their help. But if the state intervenes, it happens better, it happens more securely, and it’s a different way to invest public resources to solve the housing problem. But these are small pilot projects. So the thing I want to work on in the future is to figure out how to scale this up and make housing and neighborhood upgrading a more central part of urban policy.

JG: Can you talk about the connection between anthropology and urban planning?

AHT: In all my research projects, I try to understand urban processes from above and from the ground, and I think the combination of having studied anthropology and urban planning allows me to do that. It’s a very good way to understand one process from different perspectives. And specifically for technical topics, such as land management instruments or land value capture, when you talk to people that are living the process, you can amplify your understanding.

Since my master’s thesis, I’ve been curious about how people understand land value. In the contexts I studied, people are very preoccupied about the changes in land value of their properties, but they deal with those changes, or prospective changes, in very different ways.

For example, my student’s thesis was analyzing ethnographically how people deal with the uncertainty of the delays of an urban renewal plan, how they understand the prospective land value increment of their home, and how that aspiration of profit implies tensions in daily life with other values of their home, like the use value of their home.

And I have found the same thing in social housing, this constant tension between the home as a place for living and the home as an investment, from which they are interested in profiting. Even if they are very low-income households, those two narratives and values of home are always in tension, and they impact not only their individual behaviors, but also their community behaviors, and even their ways of relating to public institutions and the city.

So that’s my main curiosity, and that’s why I combine talking to people, being with people, and just spending time with them, with more technical things like analyzing documents, laws, regulations, and quantitative data, too.

JG: What’s one thing you wish more people understood about social housing?

AHT: We need to recenter housing policy as a social policy and not as an economic policy. We have the opportunity in Colombia, and other Latin American countries that have not yet fallen into hyper-financialization, to not follow the trajectory of the United States, of Spain, of places in which the housing crisis is worse now than ever; we are not yet in that state.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or a favorite TV show you’ve been streaming?  

AHT: I really enjoyed reading Melissa García-Lamarca’s book about people in debt in Barcelona, Non-Performing Loans, Non-Performing People. It’s about the subjective impacts that living in debt has on people, and how we understand debt as not only an economic issue, but also as a moral issue.

I’m trying to link that with our new project. I’m starting to read feminist economic analysis and anthropological economic analysis, to have a very deep understanding about what living in debt, and housing debt specifically, means for people, and what impact does this have on different aspects of their daily lives. Because here, debt is not only restricted to mortgages—low-income people here have to resort to all kinds of formal and informal debt to pay their living costs. So it’s debt with a relative, debt with a bank, the mortgage, and then it also links even to criminal debt, a criminal lender, people that charge illegally high interest rates to low-income households.

I try to watch TV on really unrelated topics. I was watching Silo, which is a dystopian futurist series about people that live in a high rise, but it’s subterranean—which is really depressing! But I like these post-apocalyptic things.

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Adriana Hurtado Tarazona of Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Credit: Courtesy photo.

A falta de acesso a moradias dignas pode perpetuar desigualdades que persistem ao longo de gerações. E, nesse sentido, países de toda a América Latina e Caribe estão enfrentando crises habitacionais. No entanto, cada um enfrenta esses desafios de maneira única. Nas cidades que estão se urbanizando rapidamente, por exemplo, em que os custos de terrenos e da construção são altos, a demanda por moradias acessíveis supera a oferta. Em outros lugares, pode ser difícil ou caro demais para os compradores de imóveis obterem um financiamento habitacional.

Esses desafios relacionados, que se manifestam em contextos distintos, exigem soluções políticas únicas e bem elaboradas. E agora, um novo relatório que “harmoniza” dados habitacionais díspares de uma dúzia de países da América Latina coloca o panorama habitacional da região em uma perspectiva mais clara para os formuladores de políticas.

O 2024 LAC Housing Yearbook, uma colaboração entre o Lincoln Institute of Land Policy e o CAF (Banco de Desenvolvimento da América Latina e do Caribe) catalogou mais de 250 indicadores habitacionais e financeiros em 12 países (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colômbia, Costa Rica, República Dominicana, Equador, El Salvador, México, Panamá, Peru e Uruguai) para permitir comparações entre os países da região. O relatório já está disponível em espanhol, com traduções para inglês e português em breve.

“Ao coletar e padronizar esse amplo conjunto de informações, o projeto busca preencher lacunas de conhecimento, permitir comparações entre países e apoiar a formulação de políticas eficientes e direcionadas que reduzam os déficits habitacionais, melhorem a acessibilidade e promovam o desenvolvimento sustentável”, afirmou Pablo López, coordenador executivo sênior de habitação no CAF.

“Os dados revelam realidades marcantes”, continuou López, cuja equipe apresentou o relatório inaugural à Assembleia Geral do Fórum de Ministros e Altas Autoridades em Habitação e Desenvolvimento Urbano da América Latina e do Caribe (MINURVI) em dezembro. “Os déficits habitacionais são significativos, a penetração de hipotecas continua baixa e a acessibilidade é constantemente prejudicada pelo aumento dos custos em um ritmo mais acelerado que o dos rendimentos.”

Os tipos de indicadores monitorados nos 12 países incluem taxas de inflação e de hipoteca, taxas de participação no mercado de trabalho formal e informal, custos de construção por metro quadrado, além de medidas quantitativas e qualitativas do déficit habitacional de um país, sendo que as primeiras se referem ao número de casas adicionais necessárias para atender à demanda, e as últimas contabilizam o número de famílias que vivem em moradias precárias. Além de um almanaque de informações estatísticas, o relatório inclui uma visão geral regional e perfis detalhados do mercado habitacional de cada país.

“É um projeto bastante ambicioso devido à ampla variedade de categorias de dados que ele tenta consolidar”, disse Luis Quintanilla, analista sênior de políticas do Lincoln Institute. A esperança é atualizar o anuário anualmente, o que permitirá comparações ano a ano, além de expandir a lista de países ao longo do tempo. “Achamos que é um recurso muito valioso”, acrescentou. ““Esperamos que seja útil para os ministros de habitação e secretários de desenvolvimento urbano, bem como para profissionais, desenvolvedores, instituições bancárias e financeiras e outros pesquisadores.”

Reunir alguns dos dados apresentou um “desafio formidável”, disse López, já que estavam dispersos em várias bases de dados públicas e privadas, exigindo uma meticulosa verificação cruzada, quando estavam disponíveis. Por exemplo, as informações sobre microfinanciamentos (pequenos empréstimos não hipotecários que as famílias podem usar para fazer melhorias graduais em suas casas) eram inconsistentes e fragmentadas. E números confiáveis sobre a produção de habitação informal e o acesso ao crédito para trabalhadores informais eram difíceis ou impossíveis de encontrar.

O processo também revelou algumas lacunas de informações que pesquisadores ou agências públicas poderiam abordar no futuro, bem como algumas ineficiências nos subsídios habitacionais. “Contrariamente à intuição, alguns mecanismos de apoio habitacional de países carecem de foco social, [o que faz com que] beneficiem grupos de maior renda, minando seus objetivos de equidade social”, explicou López.

Os países estudados não estão apenas enfrentando a crise habitacional de maneiras diferentes, mas também estão tomando medidas distintas para enfrentá-la. “Embora os países compartilhem desafios fundamentais relacionados à habitação, suas abordagens variam significativamente”, disse López. “A pesquisa revelou bolsões de inovação e progresso em toda a região—cada nação demonstrou pontos fortes únicos que oferecem insights para possíveis soluções.”

O Chile, por exemplo, desenvolveu um mercado hipotecário sofisticado “complementado por programas inovadores de subsídios para aluguel que abordam a acessibilidade habitacional de múltiplas perspectivas”, afirmou López. O Panamá pode se orgulhar de taxas de hipoteca relativamente baixas e de um mercado de crédito que alcança quase um quarto (23,1%) do PIB, “um feito notável em uma região muitas vezes caracterizada pela inclusão financeira limitada”, acrescentou. “Enquanto isso, o Equador e o Peru estão rompendo barreiras com instrumentos inovadores de financiamento verde, incluindo títulos verdes e hipotecas que demonstram uma abordagem progressista para o desenvolvimento sustentável da habitação.”

Ainda assim, os dados deixam claro que nenhum país solucionou de modo abrangente os desafios habitacionais, disse López. “Em vez disso, a região exibe um mosaico de inovações direcionadas, cada uma abordando dimensões específicas de um panorama habitacional complexo.”
Quintanilla espera que essa nova coleção de dados confiáveis e comparáveis ajude os formuladores de políticas a se conectarem e aprenderem uns com os outros. “Se algum país em particular encontrar um contexto semelhante, mas com resultados diferentes, esperamos que, ao destacar essas discrepâncias, seja possível gerar um intercâmbio de ideias e lições transferíveis”, afirmou.

Jon Gorey é redator da equipe do Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

Crédito da imagem principal: CAF – Banco de Desenvolvimento da América Latina e Caribe. 

La falta de acceso a una vivienda digna puede perpetuar la desigualdad que persiste de generación en generación. En ese sentido, países de toda América Latina y el Caribe tienen crisis de vivienda, pero cada uno se enfrenta a desafíos únicos. Por ejemplo, en las ciudades que se urbanizan rápidamente, donde los costos del terreno y la construcción son altos, la demanda de viviendas asequibles supera la oferta. En otros lugares, puede ser difícil o demasiado costoso para los compradores obtener una hipoteca.

Esos desafíos relacionados, que se dan en contextos distintos, exigen soluciones de políticas únicas y sensatas. Ahora, el panorama de la vivienda de la región es más claro para los gestores de políticas gracias a un nuevo informe en el que se “armonizan” datos dispares sobre la vivienda de una decena de países latinoamericanos.

En el Anuario de Vivienda de ALC de 2024, una colaboración entre el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo y CAF (Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe), se catalogan más de 250 indicadores de vivienda y financieros en 12 países (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, México, Panamá, Perú, República Dominicana y Uruguay) para propiciar comparaciones en toda la región. El informe ya está disponible en español, próximamente con traducciones al inglés y portugués.

“Al recopilar y estandarizar este amplio conjunto de información, el proyecto busca abordar las brechas de conocimiento, permitir hacer comparaciones entre países y apoyar la formulación de políticas eficientes y específicas que reduzcan los déficits de vivienda, mejoren la accesibilidad y promuevan el desarrollo sostenible”, explica Pablo López, coordinador ejecutivo sénior de vivienda de CAF.

“Los datos revelan realidades crudas”, continúa López, cuyo equipo presentó el informe inaugural a la Asamblea General del Foro de Ministros y Autoridades Máximas de la Vivienda y el Urbanismo de América Latina y el Caribe (MINURVI) en diciembre. “Los déficits de vivienda son significativos, la penetración hipotecaria sigue siendo baja y la asequibilidad se ve erosionada continuamente por el aumento de los costos a tasas más altas que los ingresos”.

Los tipos de indicadores analizados en los 12 países incluyen tasas de inflación e hipotecas, tasas de participación en el mercado laboral formal e informal, costos de construcción por metro cuadrado, y medidas cuantitativas y cualitativas del déficit de vivienda de un país (la primera se refiere al número de viviendas adicionales necesarias para satisfacer la demanda, mientras que la segunda indica el número de familias que viven en viviendas en malas condiciones). Además de un almanaque de información estadística, en el informe se incluye información general regional y perfiles detallados del negocio inmobiliario de cada país.

“Es un proyecto bastante ambicioso, debido a la amplia gama de categorías de datos que se intenta consolidar”, expresa Luis Quintanilla, analista sénior de políticas del Instituto Lincoln. La meta es actualizar el anuario cada año, lo que permitirá hacer comparaciones año tras año y ampliar la lista de países a lo largo del tiempo. “Creemos que es un recurso muy valioso”, agrega. “Esperamos que sea útil para los ministros de vivienda y los secretarios de desarrollo urbano, así como para los profesionales, los emprendedores inmobiliarios, las instituciones bancarias y financieras y otros investigadores”.

La recopilación de algunos de los datos presentó un “desafío formidable”, dice López, ya que estaban dispersos en varias bases de datos públicas y privadas y requerían referencias cruzadas verificadas, si es que estaban disponibles. Por ejemplo, la información sobre microfinanciación (pequeños préstamos no hipotecarios que las familias pueden utilizar para realizar mejoras graduales en sus hogares) era inconsistente y estaba fragmentada. Además, fue difícil o imposible encontrar cifras confiables sobre la fabricación de viviendas informales y el acceso al crédito para los trabajadores informales,

El proceso también reveló algunas brechas de información que los investigadores o los organismos públicos podrían abordar en el futuro, así como algunas ineficiencias en los subsidios de vivienda. “Contrario a la lógica, los mecanismos de apoyo a la vivienda de algunos países carecen de consideración social, [por lo que] benefician a los grupos de mayores ingresos y socavan sus objetivos de equidad social”, explica López.

Los países estudiados no solo están experimentando la crisis de la vivienda de diferentes maneras, sino que también están tomando distintas medidas para abordarla. “Si bien los países comparten desafíos fundamentales en materia de vivienda, sus enfoques varían de manera significativa”, dice López. “Según la investigación, existen focos de innovación y progreso en toda la región: cada nación demostró fortalezas únicas que ofrecen información valiosa sobre posibles soluciones”.

Por ejemplo, Chile ha desarrollado un sofisticado mercado hipotecario “complementado por programas innovadores de subsidios de alquiler que abordan la asequibilidad de la vivienda desde varios ángulos”, indica López. Panamá puede presumir tasas hipotecarias relativamente bajas y un mercado crediticio que alcanza casi una cuarta parte (23,1 %) del PIB, “un logro notable en una región que a menudo se caracteriza por una inclusión financiera limitada”, agrega. “Mientras tanto, Ecuador y Perú están ampliando los límites a través de instrumentos pioneros de financiamiento verde, incluidos bonos e hipotecas verdes innovadores que señalan un enfoque con visión de futuro para el desarrollo de viviendas sostenibles”.

Aun así, López explica que los datos dejan en claro que ningún país ha resuelto de manera integral sus desafíos de vivienda. “En cambio, la región demuestra una variedad de innovaciones específicas, cada una de las cuales aborda dimensiones particulares de un panorama de vivienda complejo”.

Quintanilla espera que esta nueva recopilación de datos confiables y comparables ayude a los gestores de políticas de políticas a comunicarse y aprender unos de otros. “Si un país en particular encuentra un contexto similar al suyo, pero resultados diferentes, esperamos que resaltar algunas de esas discrepancias pueda ser la chispa para un intercambio de ideas y lecciones transferibles”, dice.

Jon Gorey es redactor del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo.

Crédito de la imagen principal: Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe (CAF)

A lack of access to decent housing can perpetuate inequality that persists across generations. And in that sense, countries all across Latin America and the Caribbean are facing housing crises—but each experiences those challenges in unique ways. In rapidly urbanizing cities, for example, where land and construction costs are high, demand for affordable housing outstrips supply. In other places, it can be difficult or too expensive for homebuyers to obtain a mortgage.   

Those related challenges, playing out in distinct contexts, demand unique, thoughtful policy solutions. And now, a new report that “harmonizes” disparate housing data from a dozen Latin American countries puts the region’s housing landscape in clearer perspective for policymakers.    

The 2024 LAC Housing Yearbook, a collaboration between the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and CAF—Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, catalogs more than 250 housing and financial indicators across 12 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay) to allow comparisons across the region. The report is now available in Spanish, with English and Portuguese translations coming soon.   

“By collecting and standardizing this broad set of information, the project aims to address knowledge gaps, enable cross-country comparisons, and support the formulation of efficient and targeted policies that reduce housing deficits, improve accessibility, and promote sustainable development,” says Pablo López, senior executive housing coordinator at CAF.   

“The data reveal stark realities,” continues López, whose team presented the inaugural report to the General Assembly of the Ministers and High Authorities of Housing and Urban Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (MINURVI) in December. “Housing deficits are significant, mortgage penetration remains low, and affordability is continually eroded by costs rising at higher rates than incomes.”   

The types of indicators tracked across the 12 countries include inflation and mortgage rates, formal and informal labor market participation rates, construction costs per square meter, and both quantitative and qualitative measures of a country’s housing deficit—the former referring to the number of additional homes needed to meet demand, the latter tabulating the number of families living in substandard housing. In addition to an almanac of statistical information, the report includes a regional overview and in-depth profiles of each country’s housing market.   

 “It’s quite an ambitious project, because of the wide range of data categories it attempts to consolidate,” says Luis Quintanilla, senior policy analyst at the Lincoln Institute. The hope is to update the yearbook annually, which will allow for year-over-year comparisons, and to expand the list of countries over time. “We think it’s a very valuable resource,” he adds. “We hope it will be helpful for housing ministers and urban development secretaries, as well as practitioners, developers, banking and financial institutions, and other researchers.”   

Gathering some of the data presented a “formidable challenge,” López says, scattered as it was across various public and private databases, and required meticulous cross-referencing, if it was available at all. For example, information on microfinancing—small, non-mortgage loans that families can use to make incremental improvements to their homes—was inconsistent and fragmented. And reliable figures on informal housing production and credit access for informal workers were difficult or impossible to find.   

The process also revealed some information gaps that researchers or public agencies could address in the future, as well as some inefficiencies in housing subsidies. “Counterintuitively, some countries’ housing support mechanisms lack social targeting, [so they’re] benefiting higher-income groups, undermining their intended social equity objectives,” López explains.   

The countries studied aren’t just experiencing the housing crisis in different ways, they’re also taking different steps to address it. “While countries share fundamental housing challenges, their approaches vary significantly,” López says. “The research revealed pockets of innovation and progress across the region—each nation demonstrated unique strengths that offer insights into potential solutions.”   

Chile, for example, has developed a sophisticated mortgage market “complemented by innovative rental subsidy programs that address housing affordability from multiple angles,” López says. Panama can boast relatively low mortgage rates and a credit market that reaches almost a quarter (23.1 percent) of GDP, “a notable achievement in a region often characterized by limited financial inclusion,” he adds. “Meanwhile, Ecuador and Peru are pushing boundaries through pioneering green financing instruments, including innovative green bonds and mortgages that signal a forward-thinking approach to sustainable housing development.”   

Still, the data make clear that no country has comprehensively solved its housing challenges, López says. “Instead, the region demonstrates a mosaic of targeted innovations, each addressing specific dimensions of a complex housing landscape.”   

Quintanilla hopes this new collection of reliable, comparable data will help policymakers reach out and learn from each other. “If some particular country finds a similar context, but different outcomes, we hope that highlighting some of those discrepancies may be the spark for an exchange of ideas and transferable lessons,” he says.   

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image credit: CAF—Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean.

When Claudia López took office as Bogotá’s first elected female mayor and first openly gay mayor in January of 2020, she had big plans for the Colombian capital—literally.

Chief among her campaign pledges was a promise to finally update the city’s master plan, or Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial (POT), a long-overdue goal that had eluded her predecessors for nearly two decades. López was also determined to address the city’s social debts to women and children, and to produce climate and mobility plans that would advance urban greening efforts and restart progress on the city’s metro system as part of a multimodal public transportation strategy.

Just weeks later, those ambitions took a backseat as a deadly pandemic swept the world, plunging Bogotá and so many other cities into a state of health and economic emergency.

In a matter of months, unemployment and extreme poverty tripled, wiping out two decades of socioeconomic progress. “Nobody wants to be in charge during such a crisis—it’s a nightmare, and it’s hard to do,” says López, who was term-limited out of office in 2023 and is now a 2024 Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow at Harvard University. “But every crisis opens up opportunities that were not there before.”

A citywide sense of solidarity in the face of those punishing pandemic impacts ultimately helped López galvanize support for her updated POT. And embedded within that plan was a simple yet revolutionary idea to improve gender equality—quickly, dramatically, and for years to come.

Caring About Caregivers

In 2020, Bogotá began to build a network of neighborhood Care Blocks (Manzanas del Cuidado). These facilities provide an array of services for nearby caregivers, most of whom are women, including access to free, professional care for their dependents—children, ailing elders, relatives with disabilities—and opportunities to take part in education, counseling, training, or wellness programs. While they are intentionally located in walkable areas, the city has also provided Care Buses for those who live farther away.

The underlying idea, initially conceived by Diana Rodríguez Franco, the city’s former secretary for women’s affairs, was to offer much needed relief, respect, and opportunity for the caregivers whose invisible labor keeps the rest of the city running.

Thirty percent of women in Bogotá, 1.2 million people, are full-time caregivers who average 10 hours a day of unpaid labor. Most live in poverty and haven’t had a chance to pursue an education beyond primary school or start a career, denying them the opportunity for economic autonomy.

“That, in Bogotá, seems normal, because of religion, machismo, cultural norms,” López says. “It’s so ingrained in society that this overburden is normal. So [we are] saying, ‘That’s not normal. That is not ethically normal, it’s not socially normal, it cannot be economically normal—it’s actually counterproductive for society that we lose 52 percent of the labor force. So we’re going to change that.’”

Colombia had passed a first-of-its-kind law in 2010 requiring the government to track the economic value of unpaid care work, finding that the care economy represents 20 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. A later Oxfam study estimated that, if women received even minimum wage for unpaid care work globally, it would amount to $10.8 trillion a year. “We are the basic economic sector that allows all the other economic sectors to function,” López says.

The crisis of the pandemic quickly brought even greater attention to the importance of caregivers, as offices and other formal workplaces shut down, the city’s informal economy ground to a halt, and children stayed home for remote learning. “We went from 900 or 1,000 full-time caregivers to 1.2 million full-time caregivers in four months,” says María-Mercedes Jaramillo, former secretary of planning for Bogotá and a 2024 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. “So this issue became very tangible.”

Planning and implementing a citywide caregiver support system without an existing model to work from—translating an abstract idea into physical reality—wasn’t easy. But López, Jaramillo, and Franco worked to get the entire city government behind the program. “And when the first Care Block actually got functional,” Jaramillo says, “it really changed, in a very concrete way, the lives of the women who were able to go there.”

Care, There, Everywhere

The Manitas Care Block was the first to open, in the fall of 2020, in Ciudad Bolívar—a low-income neighborhood in the hills of south Bogotá. Laura Mullahy, senior program manager at the Lincoln Institute, says she was “extremely impressed” when she visited the facility this spring as part of a Lincoln Institute course on urban finance and land policy.

“We took the TransMiCable gondola to get there,” Mullahy says, referring to the public cable-car system that connects the steep hillside neighborhoods of Ciudad Bolívar to the city’s bus rapid transit network kilometers below. “Passengers get on and off the gondolas on one floor of the building, and downstairs is the area where government services are offered.”

In addition to professionally provided care and recreational programs for children, elders, and people with disabilities, the free services available to caregivers include medical consultations, legal and psychological counseling, fitness and yoga classes, and educational opportunities. There are even certificate programs for caregivers, intended to formally recognize and elevate the role’s societal status and to train more men in the practice.

Available services also include “a community laundry, a computer center, and urban agriculture,” Mullahy says. “The menu of educational offerings is expansive; a few examples are flexible classes to earn high school degrees, job-oriented training, and financial education oriented toward purchasing a home.”

Nearly 50,000 people live in close proximity to the Manitas Care Block, including 5,416 female caregivers—but it’s not just women who benefit. The facility also serves the neighborhood’s 3,838 children under five years old, 3,516 elderly residents, and 2,448 people with disabilities.

Mullahy was also impressed by the employees she spoke to. “They were extremely passionate about their work—and in general, there was a palpable sense of pride in the Care Blocks, both from the staff and the community,” she says. “We were told that vandalism of both the Care Blocks and the associated transportation infrastructure is very low because the community values the system so much.”

Indeed, the Care Blocks have proven immensely popular, even among the politicians who campaigned to succeed López as mayor. And because the Care system is written into the POT, the master plan guiding the city’s urban development through 2035, its impact will outlast any one mayoral term.

All Part of the Plan

As of June, 23 Care Blocks were operating throughout Bogotá. More than 400,000 residents have received free services, including more than 800 women who have completed their high school diploma. The POT includes budgeting and specific plans to establish 22 more locations by 2035. “It’s not cosmetic, it’s really structural,” Jaramillo says. “The Care Blocks are not a marginal thing in the land use plan.”

López uses a more domestic metaphor: “It’s not just the cherry on the cake, it’s actually a strong part of the cake,” she says. “The Care Blocks are just one aspect of a new epistemology of the city, where we have been introducing a different perspective: the perspective of the oppressed. Except that the oppressed are the majority—more than 50 percent of the population.”

Embedding a social program into the master planning process “is very innovative—it’s a brand-new model,” says Anaclaudia Rossbach, the Lincoln Institute’s outgoing director of programs for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and soon-to-be executive director of UN-Habitat. “They are on the frontier of master plans—I think it’s something that the Global South can contribute to the Global North and to other areas.”

It also cemented into place a long-absent feminist perspective on development. “The cities that we have were not planned by, with, and for women,” Rossbach notes. “Incorporating the Care Blocks into the master plan means incorporating a strong gender perspective about the use of space, and it institutionalizes this social policy.”

Rossbach sees hope in the way Bogotá has successfully put abstract principles into practice. “It’s easy to say we need to plan cities so that they work better for women. But the how is more difficult,” she says. “With the case of Bogotá and the Care Blocks, we have a very concrete example that can inspire other cities. And it can also inspire cities to understand that they can be creative in their own way—that they can create something totally different.”

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image:
Caption: Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López, in light purple, celebrates with caregivers who have completed educational programs offered through the city’s Care Blocks. Credit: City of Bogotá Secretary for Women’s Affairs via Instagram.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy today announced its director of Latin America and the Caribbean, Anacláudia Rossbach, has been elected by the United Nations General Assembly as executive director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).  

Anacláudia Rossbach is an economist with more than 20 years of experience working on housing issues including informal settlements, land, and urban policy. In her current role, she has bolstered the Latin America and Caribbean program through efforts such as establishing partnerships with educational institutions, creating a new strategic alliance with the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador, launching a new Community of Practice (CoP) model of technical assistance in Paraguay, and inaugurating the Lincoln Prize for Journalism on Urban Policy, Sustainable Development, and Climate Change.  

“I am deeply honored by this appointment and grateful for the trust placed in me by the UN member states and the UN secretary-general—I am eager to bring my experience to the global stage,” said Anacláudia Rossbach. “In these two years working for the Lincoln Institute, I significantly expanded my knowledge about land policies—ratifying my previous recognition of the centrality of land in overcoming the great challenges we face as humanity. I appreciate the opportunity I had to be ‘at home’ at Lincoln, exchanging knowledge and ideas with my colleagues and the robust network of professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean.” 

Prior to joining the Lincoln Institute, Rossbach was the regional manager for Latin America and the Caribbean at Cities Alliance. In that role, she promoted the transfer and exchange of knowledge and provided advisory services on housing and urban policies in the Global South. She was responsible for establishing the Urban Housing Practitioners Hub (UHPH), a network of experts, practitioners, and researchers working in urban development and housing. 

Previously, she worked as a senior housing specialist for the World Bank in Brazil and internationally. In that role, she served as a high-level consultant and provided technical assistance to develop and implement Brazilian housing and slum-upgrading policies, including the Growth Acceleration Program for Favelas and the housing subsidies program Minha Casa, Minha Vida (“My House, My Life”).  

Throughout her career, Rossbach has also worked on projects including designing one of the world’s most significant municipal-level slum-upgrade programs in São Paulo, Brazil, designing institutional and operational strategies to expand access to adequate housing in Peru with the Inter-American Development Bank, and leading a global program on informality as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She holds a bachelor of science in economics and a master of science in political economy from Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Brazil. 

“Anacláudia’s impact at the Lincoln Institute over the past two years is palpable, and can be evidenced through advances in research, partnerships, and technical assistance that we have been able to bring to Latin America and the Caribbean focusing on key issues such as fiscal systems, climate change, spatial equity, and land conservation,” said George W. McCarthy, president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute. “We will miss her deeply, but are excited to support her efforts to build inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and communities through this new role with UN-Habitat.” 

Rossbach succeeds Maimunah Mohd Sharif of Malaysia, executive director of UN-Habitat from January 2018 to January 2024. She will serve a four-year term, and her appointment date will be announced soon. 

Image: Courtesy of Anacláudia Rossbach