Mexico’s housing crisis: vacancy, limited access & Deaf policy responses

During the 2000s, millions of Mexicans acquired mortgages to buy homes in the fringes of cities throughout the country. Many such households have faced limited access to services, infrastructure and employment, and have seen their monthly mortgage payments increase while their debt remains virtually unchanged. In parallel, while about a third of Mexicans still live in poor housing conditions, numerous newly built developments have exhibited alarmingly high housing vacancy rates. Such coexistence of housing vacancy and shortages exposes considerable tensions in Mexican housing policy between the social and the economic values of housing. While previous analyses have centred on the financialization of housing policy in Mexico, this paper examines some of the local, political and socioeconomic implications of recent federal housing finance policy and urban development patterns, particularly as they relate to housing access and vacancy. Furthermore, this paper discusses the more recent evolution of Mexico’s housing and urban development policy, as well as the juxtaposition of the institutional and civic responses that have emerged to make front to previous financialization and housing development patterns and their implications.