When it comes to housing in Latin America and the Caribbean, the main deficit is not the quantity of homes available but rather their quality (IDB, 2019). Many low-income families end up in informal settlements on public lands, building their homes in vulnerable areas, with inadequate building and sanitary standards that put their health and safety at risk. Affordable housing is a major challenge in many cities and accessing reasonable financing options for making home repairs and improvements is often out of reach.

In Trinidad and Tobago, from 2011 to 2018, the IDB supported the Neighborhood Upgrading Program (TT-L1016), which worked to improve the living and housing conditions for low-income groups in marginal areas. This included basic infrastructure upgrades, housing subsidies, regularizing tenure in informal settlements and strengthening the capacity of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. By project completion, more than 3,300 families benefited from neighborhood upgrades, including improvements to basic infrastructure— mainly potable water, drainage, and paved road access. In addition, more than 2,800 households benefited from home improvement subsidies, and almost 1,000 more were delivered for the building or purchase of new incremental housing—more than half of which went to women-headed households. Furthermore, with support of the program the Land Settlement Agency was able to attend to 100 percent of its applications (22,700 in total) for the first stage of title regularization. For more information, visit the Project Completion Report.