The Role of Housing Finance in Mexico's Vacancy Crisis

The Role of Housing Finance in Mexico's Vacancy Crisis PDF Author: Paavo Monkkonen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
In the wake of the housing market crash in the United States in the late 2000s, images of abandoned homes on the urban periphery of American cities dominated international media coverage. This narrative of peri-urban over-extension was used by media documenting the housing crisis in Mexico, despite the profound differences in context, namely the role of the government in housing finance. This paper disentangles the issue of Mexican housing vacancy from surface similarities with the US through an examination of vacancy rates within cities in Mexico, and tests of four hypotheses about their determinants using data from the 2010 Census of Population and Housing. Results confirm that violence related to the drug war, international migration, and housing finance are associated with vacancy. However, more housing finance is strongly related to higher vacancy in the central city but not in the urban periphery. In spite of the existence of vacancy in newly built houses, the expansion of credit for new housing in Mexico has been most significant for the role it has played in hollowing out the central city. The paper concludes with a review of policies to address the vacancy crisis in Mexico and a framework of best practices.

The Role of Housing Finance in Mexico's Vacancy Crisis

The Role of Housing Finance in Mexico's Vacancy Crisis PDF Author: Paavo Monkkonen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
In the wake of the housing market crash in the United States in the late 2000s, images of abandoned homes on the urban periphery of American cities dominated international media coverage. This narrative of peri-urban over-extension was used by media documenting the housing crisis in Mexico, despite the profound differences in context, namely the role of the government in housing finance. This paper disentangles the issue of Mexican housing vacancy from surface similarities with the US through an examination of vacancy rates within cities in Mexico, and tests of four hypotheses about their determinants using data from the 2010 Census of Population and Housing. Results confirm that violence related to the drug war, international migration, and housing finance are associated with vacancy. However, more housing finance is strongly related to higher vacancy in the central city but not in the urban periphery. In spite of the existence of vacancy in newly built houses, the expansion of credit for new housing in Mexico has been most significant for the role it has played in hollowing out the central city. The paper concludes with a review of policies to address the vacancy crisis in Mexico and a framework of best practices.

Mexico’s Housing Paradox

Mexico’s Housing Paradox PDF Author: Laura Alejandra Reyes Ruiz del Cueto
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Neoliberal restructuring in Mexico drove a considerable mortgage expansion and a housing production boom, arguably with the intention of increasing housing access for lower-middle income formal workers. During the 2000s, numerous households acquired mortgages to buy houses in the fringes of Mexican cities, where local governments have struggled to provide adequate infrastructure and services. Many such families have seen their mortgages and monthly payments swell through the years while their debt remains virtually unchanged, forcing many of them to leave their dwellings behind and return to renting or to living with other relatives closer to the urban core. Numerous newly built developments have thus exhibited alarmingly high housing vacancy rates. By 2010, Mexico had over five million vacant housing units and a 14 percent vacancy rate. Paradoxically, however, about a third of Mexicans still live in poor housing conditions. This research analyzes the influence of recent federal housing finance policy, and urban development practices at the state and local levels, in promoting housing production and vacancy. It also discusses some of the spatial and socioeconomic implications of these development patterns for residents, government and financing institutions, and developers. In particular, this research examines the experiences of two cases: Tijuana, Baja California and Huehuetoca, State of Mexico, chosen for (1) the severity of their vacancy and housing conditions, (2) the amount of housing investment they received in the 2000s, and (3) their contrasting institutional capacity at the local and metropolitan levels. Drawing upon mixed methods and extensive field research, I argue that the coexistence of a housing oversupply and a shortage exposes the tensions between the commodification and the right to housing, and the extent to which the former has trumped the latter. Given the flourishing of construction and real estate interests through state support, Mexican housing policy has served as a politically guided intensification of market rule, rather than as an apolitical and technocratic framework, as neoliberal advocates have often argued. Contrary to the rhetoric of autonomous market-led efficiency, the Mexican government has played a key role in mitigating risks for the construction and financial sectors – and not households. By doing so, housing reforms have lacked a critical analysis of the socioeconomic and political implications of implementing strategies that have backed private interests in the name of expanding home ownership for the poor while in reality many low-income households remain locked out of adequate and affordable homes. The present research has implications for theories regarding how governing regimes operate to facilitate growth. The interactions and relationships between different government levels and private actors and interests since the implementation of a new housing finance and development model in Mexico have stemmed elaborate power structures and a multi-level regime and complex system of governance, distinct from that described by regime theorists whose focus has generally been on local governance (Stone 1989). Furthermore, this research exemplifies the ways in which this multi-level regime has reproduced and intensified socioeconomic and political (decision-making) inequities, ultimately fracturing the housing model itself.

OECD Urban Policy Reviews: Mexico 2015 Transforming Urban Policy and Housing Finance

OECD Urban Policy Reviews: Mexico 2015 Transforming Urban Policy and Housing Finance PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264227296
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This book examines how Mexico can develop more competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities; improve the capacities of institutions and foster greater collaboration among them, and how they can better fulfill their pension mandate.

Mexico Urbanization Review

Mexico Urbanization Review PDF Author: Yoonhee Kim
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464809178
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Despite impressive economic growth and increasing prosperity, cities in Mexico do not seem to have fully captured the benefits of urban agglomeration, in part because of rapid and uncoordinated urban growth. Recent expansion of many Mexican cities has been distant, disconnected, and dispersed, driven mainly by large single-use housing developments on the outskirts of cities. The lack of a coordinated approach to urban development has hindered the ability of cities in Mexico to boost economic growth and foster inclusive development. It also has created a fissure between new housing developments and urban services, infrastructure, and access to employment. Mexico Urbanization Review: Managing Spatial Growth for Productive and Livable Cities in Mexico provides an analytical basis to understand how well-managed urban growth can help Mexican cities to capture the positive gains associated with urbanization. To this end, the authors analyze the development patterns of the 100 largest Mexican cities using a set of spatial indexes. They then examine how the recent urban growth has affected the economic performance and livability of Mexican cities and offer recommendations for adjusting urban policy frameworks and instruments in ways that support sustainable spatial development and make cities more productive and inclusive.

OECD Territorial Reviews: Valle de México, Mexico

OECD Territorial Reviews: Valle de México, Mexico PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264245170
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This review finds that while Mexico has taken important steps in addressing the urban challenges in the Valle de México, Mexico’s largest metropolitan area, there is a need for major metropolitan governance reform.

Housing Policy Innovation in the Global South

Housing Policy Innovation in the Global South PDF Author: Paavo Monkkonen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429614128
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Housing problems have become increasingly complex in the Global South. An increased pressure to upgrade older stock, to provide adequate infrastructure, and bring city amenities to urban peripheries compounds the continued need for new housing of a decent standard. This comprehensive volume spans nine countries, simultaneously analyzing innovative housing policies and questioning the idea of innovation in this arena. The authors describe three persistent, global challenges to contemporary policy: the inherent difficulty in mass-producing housing of decent quality with access to the city; the challenge of community-based upgrading programmes, which often fail to benefit those who are worst off; and the political root of housing policies, which don’t always consider the diverse needs of populations at the expense of the least powerful. This volume raises questions about what many consider the two most successful areas of housing policy in the Global South: the community-based land sharing programmes for redevelopment in South-East Asia and the finance-driven social housing programmes in Latin America. The authors examine mass housing production programmes, incremental development processes, community-based urban upgrading, the legal structure of condominiums, and land-sharing policies, while also highlighting challenges to policy learning across contexts. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers and those involved with contemporary housing policies, particularly in the Global South. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Housing Policy.

Housing Finance Mechanisms in Mexico

Housing Finance Mechanisms in Mexico PDF Author: Jose Luis Valencia
Publisher: UN-HABITAT
ISBN: 9211323584
Category : Housing
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description


Zoning

Zoning PDF Author: Elliott Sclar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429951256
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Zoning is at once a key technical competency of urban planning practice and a highly politicized regulatory tool. How this contradiction between the technical and political is resolved has wide-reaching implications for urban equity and sustainability, two key concerns of urban planning. Moving beyond critiques of zoning as a regulatory hindrance to local affordability or merely the rulebook that guides urban land use, this textbook takes an institutional approach to zoning, positioning its practice within the larger political, social, and economic conflicts that shape local access for diverse groups across urban space. Foregrounding the historical-institutional setting in which zoning is embedded allows planners to more deeply engage with the equity and sustainability issues related to zoning practice. By approaching zoning from a social science and planning perspective, this text engages students of urban planning, policy, and design with several key questions relevant to the realities of zoning and land regulation they encounter in practice. Why has the practice of zoning evolved as it has? How do social and economic institutions shape zoning in contemporary practice? How does zoning relate to the other competencies of planning, such as housing and transport? Where and why has zoning, an act of physical land use regulation, replaced social planning? These questions, grounded in examples and cases, will prompt readers to think critically about the potential and limitations of zoning. By reforging the important links between zoning practice and the concerns of the urban planning profession, this text provides a new framework for considering zoning in the 21st century and beyond.

Building an Inclusive Mexico Policies and Good Governance for Gender Equality

Building an Inclusive Mexico Policies and Good Governance for Gender Equality PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 926426549X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This review looks at gender equality in Mexico, examining what advancement has already been made and exploring what needs to be done to close existing gender gaps in political, social and economic life and promote real social change.

Urban Planning in Mexico

Urban Planning in Mexico PDF Author: Paavo Monkkonen
Publisher: UCLA Ciudades
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
This book examines the scope of urban planning in Mexico through case studies of four municipalities - Campeche, Hermosillo, Leon and Morelia - that have recently updated their plans using new federal guidelines. We seek to advance a research agenda on the impacts of planning and its effectiveness by proposing some foundations for how to assess planning processes, as well as to provide guidance for the federal government of Mexico in its oversight of municipal planning practice and recommendations for the four cities we study. We begin with the concern that the debate over whether urban planning in Mexico “works” suffers from a lack of shared definitions about what is and is not within the scope of urban planning, and a shared conceptual framework for assessing the planning process. The case studies were conducted as part of a graduate studio in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. They rely on multiple interviews with planners and professionals in each city as well as documentary and data analysis, and literature reviews. We use a framework of five processes: creating a plan, implementing the plan, raising revenue to fund urban infrastructure, upgrading existing neighborhoods to ensure equal access across neighborhoods, and investing in new infrastructure to support growth. Each case presents a brief urban history and contextual data; a description of local government planning activities, the current plan, the city’s political history, and transparency in local planning; an assessment of planning processes, the mechanisms for changing land uses, and examples one infrastructure project and enforcement of land use rules; and an evaluation of the plan itself, including some GIS analysis local zoning and federal policy. The book’s recommendations fall into three areas: making plans into part of an ongoing and iterative process, increasing coordination between municipal budgeting and planning, and creating transparency and public input to the planning process. More specifically, we find that new plans often ignore successes and failures of prior plans, they do not periodically assess indicators to gauge impact, and discretionary changes in between plan updates diminishes the importance of the plan itself. In the second area, we argue that the scope of planning must be expanded. The plan should be integrated with the municipal budgeting process and municipalities in Mexico should work to generate more local revenues to adequately fund plans. Finally, in the third area, we recommend making planning documents, zoning maps, and basic data on urban conditions accessible to the public. A lack of transparency and the often opaque decision making processes harm the legitimacy of governance. We also outline how the federal government can play a role in advancing these recommendations for local planning processes.