Advisory Center for Affordable Settlements & Housing

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Document Type General
Publish Date 07/08/2015
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Published By http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264227293-en
Edited By Tabassum Rahmani
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Transforming Urban Policy and Housing Finance

Mexico has undertaken ambitious housing and urban policy reforms in parallel to its adoption of a series of structural reforms emerging from the Pacto. P Mexico. Responding to the country’s rapid urbanization in the second half of the 20th century, previous housing policies were successful in reducing the country’s quantitative housing deficit and making home ownership increasingly accessible to all income levels. The rapid expansion of housing finance, led by INFONAVIT – the country’s largest provident housing fund – and facilitated by public policies aiming to expand access to housing, made formal housing a reality for an ever larger share of the population. By early 2013, INFONAVIT had assisted more than 7 million workers acquire decent housing, and today roughly one in four homes in Mexico is financed by INFONAVIT. However, the previous housing model came with high costs for the country’s urban development. Federal policies – federal housing finance in particular – facilitated the development of mass-produced homes throughout Mexico on inexpensive, peri-urban land far from job opportunities, city centres and urban services. Many of the urban challenges facing policymakers today are in part a legacy of past housing policy: urban sprawl, as cities continue to spread into peripheral zones and lose population in their centres; new housing developments that are insufficiently connected to transport and infrastructure networks; a rising share of vacant homes  totaling 4.9 million, or one-seventh of the housing stock; and socio-economic segregation.

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