The Development of Housing in Mexico: A Welfare Regime Approach

Abstract

R i c a r d o V e lá z q u e z L e y e rHousing represents a basic human need. Families can access housing through public policy, market mechanisms or by their own resources. This article adopts a welfare regime approach to analyse the housing sector in Mexico. The objective is to map the Mexican housing regime and to reveal its major outcomes. The study reveals the roles that public policy, markets and families have played for housing provision in the country's recent history. Findings show that whilst recent policy changes have enhanced the government's intervention in the housing sector, they have reproduced the unequal and fragmented nature of the country's social policy, and their design based on a market rationale has not resolved the housing needs for the majority of the population. The state and markets fail to provide adequate support for the majority of Mexican families, which continue to bear the heaviest responsibility for housing provision.

Institutional Design for Sustainable Urbanization in the Caribbean

“…The 1970s-1980s represent a watershed in social policy reforms as housing became the epicenter of government's response to socio-economic difficulties in which urbanization played a role. The Workers' Housing Fund National Institute (Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores -INFONAVIT) and the Housing Fund of the State Workers' Social Security and Services Institute (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado -FOVISSSTE) were created in 1972 (Leyer, 2015;).…”

“…Whereas INFONAVIT and FOVISSSTE represent a salutary step for housing policy, their growth was argued to be slow so that by 1989 both funds together were granting no more than a total of 100,000 loans. There have been claims of nepotism and clientelism associated with access to housing solutions in Mexico that combined with adoption of neo-liberal ideas of public provision, led to reforms to the operations of INFONAVIT and FOVISSSTE as well as reforms to housing funding and construction from the 1990s onwards (Leyer, 2015).…”