This paper presents the findings of a meta-evaluation of Chile’s Social Housing Programs since the country’s return to democracy in 1990. Chile’s housing policy and the specific programs embedded in it represent an interesting case study. The country’s housing policy and programs are of the most copied among the Chilean policies. The home-grown policy (see Gilbert 2001) was and is considered a vanguard way of approaching housing problems. Hence, many countries in Latin America either directly or indirectly through technical advice from the multilateral have imported the Chilean housing policy model. The affordability approach (see Hulchanski, 1995 and Pelletiere 2006) leads to a focus on if there is an enabling framework (see HABITAT, 1988, and the World Bank, 1992) or not. That is generally on macroeconomic policy and context conditions, which have been favorable in Chile and specific policies like the introduction of inflation index ((UR units of fomenting from the Spanish Unidades de Fomento) and pension reform. Thus the policy focus under this approach is on obtaining a better enabling environment through promoting the instruments and actors in the provision of private solutions.

The structure of the paper is built around a set of specific evaluative questions in search of the answer to the above overall question. After the introduction, the second Section attempts to answer: what was the general context and specific housing needs that the programs attempted to tackle? The third Section discusses: what were the policy responses and the evolving design features of the housing programs. The fourth Section’s underlying questions are were the sizes of the programs adequate relative to the magnitudes of the housing needs, were the programs cost-efficient, and what were the main problems that were encountered during the implementation of the programs? The fifth Section responds to the question: what was the beneficiaries’ profile, and what was the incidence of and de facto income-based targeting efficiency of the programs? The sixth Section discusses what were the welfare outcome effects of the programs from both naïve and impact evaluation viewpoints. The seventh Section’s main question is whether the costs are greater or less than the benefits of the programs. The penultimate section brings together the findings to answer the question: which program is the best.