neighborhood infrastructure
The first thing that has to be done, according to Marco Antonio Figueroa, commercial director of Crédito para ti, has to do with the lack of urban planning in the municipalities.
“The lack of that planning is creating chaos for us. What needs to be done is comprehensive urban planning”, he said during his participation in the Expansion Meeting The challenges of housing in Mexico.
He added that it is necessary to bring infrastructure to the neighborhoods, neighborhoods and subdivisions, because until now there are no more than two or three credits that have this purpose. “There is a space that is being created between the large national and local infrastructures,” he commented.
The housing policy is governed by each municipality, an aspect that would have to change at a higher level of government -state-, as this has led to three problems, explained Carlos Martínez Velázquez, general director of the National Fund Institute. Housing for Workers (Infonavit).
The lack of measurement of the economic impact of housing in the municipalities results in the inability to provide services, collection or planning.
Another factor that prevents real estate development in municipalities has to do with the protection of cultural and natural assets; however, with better territorial planning “you could better distribute the burdens of habitable land,” said the official.
The third aspect has to do with a classist and racist attitude. “They (the mayors) say that affordable housing is done by someone else, not in my municipality, pure residences. The prejudices of the mayor they elect, is what governs because there is no long-term planning, ”lamented Martínez Velázquez, although he did not mention the names of the officials.
Hence the need for urban planning to fall at the state level, and not in the municipalities.
Francisco Bermúdez, vice president of the Executive Commission for Housing and Urban Development of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC), pointed out that the real estate developer was seen as the one who “was going to supply them with everything they wanted.” For example, he added, “they charge water rights, but you still have to put the infrastructure on it and get it there.”
One solution has to do with real estate developments where there are homes of different value. However, not all developers have the ability to do so.
“We, like Vinte, what we did and the success we can have is that we bring out a product with a complete fractionation. There are subdivisions that have houses from 500,000 pesos to 1.8 million in the same development. What’s going on? A social anthropology, which leads you to better opportunities”, explained Sergio Leal Aguirre, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Vinte.
“The person who buys a house for 500,000 pesos goes and plays basketball with the one for 1.8 million and you don’t think about who has the biggest house. You think about beating him”, he added as an example to point out that the income of the people does not matter, if not that, when finding coincidences, “they fight for a good, then the subdivisions begin to take care of themselves, and when they begin to take care of themselves, your lots are beginning to be valued”.
In that sense of synergy, “with clear rules, it works quite well. These mixtures give us that social fabric, quite adequate” to have houses structured according to the environment, added Francisco Bermúdez, vice president of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC).
multicenter development
Another point that has changed, indicated the head of Infonavit, has to do with the fact that now we have to think about a better distribution of land and cities.
“Forget this idea of cities that were a single city center and peripheries, that the poorest go abroad, where you make life more expensive for them. It is a totally classist thing. What we are looking for now is a multicentric development of cities that must have different consolidated centers and, from there, be structured through public transport systems, mainly”, he detailed.
The obstacle has to do with the fact that this type of development crosses municipal lines, since between municipalities, even if they are neighbors, they have different rules on the matter, according to the official.
