Emir Olivares and Alma Muñoz
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, December 19, 2024, p. 4
In the last decade there has been a deficit in the construction of housing for lower-income workers, so there are currently 7.3 million beneficiaries who, although they can access a loan from the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers ( Infonavit), in the market they do not find housing according to their economic capabilities.
The head of Infonavit, Octavio Romero Oropeza, stated the above during the morning conference at the National Palace of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
He stated that these beneficiaries – of which 3.2 million are women – earn up to two minimum wages or less and have the right to a loan through the institute to access social housing with an average value of 550 thousand pesos.
According to a graph presented by the official, from 2016 to date there has been a drop in the construction of this type of housing.
In 2016, 264,101 houses in general were built, of which 51 percent were of social interest; A year later there were 217,196 constructions and 46 percent social; In 2018, a total of 210,351 homes and 43 percent for low-income sectors.
For 2019, 34 percent of the 181,031 houses built were of social interest; In 2020 the figure dropped to 28 percent of the 151,366 total homes made in the country; A year later, that type represented 21 percent of the 164,000 built.
In 2022, 135,575 new homes were built, of which 18 percent were of social interest; In 2023 the figures were 131,048 total and 23 percent of these were social; and until August 2024, 81,335 homes had been built, of which 15 percent are of social interest.
Romero stressed that from 1987 and until the beginning of the administration of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Inexplicably, credits were delivered whose characteristic was that even though the beneficiaries made their corresponding payments, far from going down, the credits went up, this turned them into unpayable debts. This caused the Infonavit portfolio, which consists of 6.2 million loans, to have 4 million in unpayable condition today.
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He asserted that in the last administration, measures were implemented to benefit the rights of Infonavit, which led to the change in the model of unpayable loans and the establishment of policies that prohibited the eviction of families. Scheme that, he said, is maintained in the Sheinbaum government.
