Impact on the direct costs of social interest and priority interest housing by including new construction standards: Cali case

Social interest housing (VIS, in Spanish) and priority interest housing (VIP, in Spanish) programs have been promoted in Colombia to provide affordable housing to low-income households. Currently, in addition to the Colombian Seismic Resistant Construction Regulations, last updated in 2010 (NSR-2010), there are other mandatory construction regulation that have been issued after 2010, producing an additional cost per square-meter of constructed area and exceeding the maximum limits established for these types of residential projects. Adjust the project to the established limits result in area reduction of the areas and quality of construction finishes of the final product. In this research, historical statistics of the construction costs of VIS and VIP in Cali are reviewed, and the impact on the cost of these housing types with respect to the inclusion of new technical dispositions is evaluated. The results reveal that the established maximum values for these types of projects must be adjusted due to the fact that the new standards must be incorporated.