The text describes the changes in the housing policy in the last twenty years, the institutional conditions and financing, and proposes four general principles that must be reviewed to change the present course of the housing policy, identified like challenges: the diversity and flexibility; the quality of the city, and the integral management. In each one of them develops a brief approach of the discussion and proposes examples and references that orient the options of change for a better management. The interest focuses in the housing problem of the poorest families in Colombia.