Reframing affordable housing in Latin America through public health and climate resilience

Urban development in Latin America is characterized by rapid urbanization, environmental vulnerability, and social inequality, all of which are intensified by climate change. In Brazil, these issues converge in the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV) program. While MCMV has expanded access to affordable housing, its broader impacts on health, climate resilience, and equity remain underexplored. This commentary reframes MCMV as a multisectoral intervention with implications for health, spatial justice, and environmental sustainability. Earlier phases of the program reproduced patterns of peripheralization, segregation, and limited access to health-promoting infrastructure, whereas recent reforms have incorporated concerns with adaptation through location, energy efficiency, and environmental safeguards. Although these changes improve alignment with the SDGs, they remain largely normative and fall short of addressing climate resilience as a central dimension. We argue for embedding health and climate goals into housing policy design, and for advancing rigorous evaluation through natural experiments and mixed methods to evaluate real-world interventions. These approaches are crucial for understanding how large-scale housing programs influence spatial justice, quality of life, and environmental exposures in underserved areas. This commentary calls for placing sustainability and health at the center of future housing initiatives in Latin America and beyond. • Affordable housing in Latin America shapes health equity and climate resilience. • Brazil's Minha Casa Minha Vida program illustrates how urban policy impacts health. • Natural experiments and mixed-methods approaches reveal policy impacts on communities. • Peripheral housing developments highlight spatial inequities in urban health. • Embedding health and climate goals in housing policy creates healthier, fairer cities.