An Impact Evaluation of Chile's Progressive Housing Program

This paper presents the findings of an evaluation of Chile's Progressive Housing Program (PHP), which is a public housing program that finances the purchase of a new house for lower income households. The evaluation finds that the programs' package (savings requirement, voucher and mortgage) design is inappropriate if the program is targeted to the poor. In fact the pro-poor targeting of the program was poor with high under-coverage and high leakage. Furthermore, the benefit of a minimum quality new house was not sustainable as many households slipped back into the housing shortage category overtime. This impact evaluation reveals that although the program had significant positive effects on materiality conditions (access to water, sewerage, and electricity), it had a negative effect on overcrowding, and had no discernible effects on welfare indicators (poverty, school attendance, occupation ratio).