Some 805,000 Costa Rican homes require some type of repair on roofs, walls or floors, says a report prepared by the Housing Promotion Foundation (Fundación Promotora de Vivienda – Fuprovi).
The report, made public on Wednesday, shows that one and a half million houses in the country or 52.3% of housing require intervention.
To reach that estimate, Fuprovi implemented data from the National Household Survey 2018 (Encuesta Nacional de Hogares – Enaho), which evaluates the quality of housing in the country.
Franklin Solano, a researcher at Fuprovi, said the figure is negative because if these structures are not intervened, they will worsen their condition.
“The homes have to be repaired so they do not deteriorate further and instead of having good homes, we will have regular or bad homes,” he said.
According to Fuprovi, carelessness in the maintenance of homes leads to the deterioration of structures.
The study reveals that the number of homes needing repairs has increased by 80,000 units in the last five years.
Housing needs on the decline
The Fuprovi estimates that there is a “natural shortage” of 21,600 houses in the country. This taking into account the families that live within shared or uninhabitable homes.
The study highlights that in recent years there has been a significant reduction in the need for new structures, down from the 31,000 in 2016, the major reduction occurring in the past year.
Source: La Nacion in Spanish