Housing and Urban Policy, another Disaster

Building housing is building a city. And making cities competitive, prosperous, with a low ecological footprint, efficient, and with a high quality of life should be one of the priorities in Mexico, a country that is increasingly urban. (Almost 80% of the population lives in cities.) This requires a housing doctrine linked to urban policies, which guarantees the right to the city: that is, to education, culture, leisure, coexistence and social integration, in central areas of cities, or just adjacent, with services essential audiences. Only houses built in the context of dense, vertical cities and with a good endowment of public spaces and green areas and public transport will thus be able to ensure the right to the city. Nothing worse than low-income housing located in nondescript dovecotes in exo-urban areas with very low land prices, and far from the city itself, where transportation becomes a heavy economic, social, personal, family burden for the professional performance of workers, and for the competitiveness of companies. The price of land is lower the further away it is from the city, which makes low-income housing with mortgages more accessible to workers, not to mention the lack or precariousness of public services. However, many of them are abandoned by their families as unlivable, becoming dens for criminals. In this scenario, housing policy has been the force that has shaped the expansion dynamics of Mexico’s cities. In the last 40 years they have multiplied their territorial extension several times, while their population has grown much less. The consequence is every day less density, more dispersion, and an urban structure that prevents quality services and efficient public transport. In this way, mobility based on private cars is imposed for those who can. The modal structure of transport is distorted, the number of trips by private car and fuel consumption rise exponentially, while the ecological footprint of cities deepens. The ecological and climatic impact is brutal, as are the consequences on people’s daily lives and on the competitiveness of the city itself. Investments and jobs are lost.

The housing backlog in Mexico exceeds 8.5 million homes. With the government of President López, housing production has fallen by more than 30%, especially in social housing. Likewise, urban policy has disappeared. Subsidies for low-income housing that were previously granted by the National Housing Commission (CONAVI) to workers affiliated with INFONAVIT are now delivered with the decision of the SEDATU on a patronage basis and with electoral criteria. CONAVI has been practically useless. Not only are the subsidies for the production of social housing important in themselves, but also the criteria for its geographical and urban location, which defines the dynamics of cities. For this reason, the policy of housing subsidies in already urbanized areas or contiguous to the cities in Containment Perimeters was fundamental, as CONAVI did before, which began to correct the urban distortions of the housing policy. This government threw overboard the possibility of creating a large bank of urban land or territorial reserves, between SEDATU, INFONAVIT and CONAVI, capable of housing most of the social housing developments, on properties with criteria of services, integration urban and transport, as well as public spaces and green areas. The production of vertical housing in central or directly contiguous areas of the cities was no longer prioritized, as was the adjustment or matching of municipal urban development programs to promote verticality, density, and the diversity of land uses. Also, the possibility of promoting the application of the property tax in the municipalities to penalize vacant or underutilized lots and reward density and verticality was left aside. The government of President López similarly eliminated the Green Mortgage, which financed a dimension of sustainability in the housing policy, with attributes that generate savings for the user and contribute to the mitigation of climate change: photovoltaic solar energy, solar heaters, insulation thermal, and efficient lighting. This government also forgot to work with private financial institutions and development banks to generate credit options for the sector not affiliated with the IMSS that does not have a housing subaccount in INFONAVIT. Everything turned into electoral patronage subsidies, and a housing policy coupled with sustainable urban development was dismantled. More than 400,000 Mexicans have been left without the possibility of acquiring a well-located home. The industry moved to make housing in higher income strata; the poor have suffered. Social housing and cities in Mexico have also been victims of perverse populism and the destruction of the institutions of the Mexican State.