Social Housing in Mexico

The recent evolution of social housing policies in Mexico promoted the deregulation of housing finance and a shift from top-down publicly controlled provision of social housing to a corporate model of social housing development based on subsidized homeownership for low- and middle-income households. While innovation through mortgage-backed certificates mobilized private capital for the purchase of social housing, the housing policy did not provide the regulatory framework necessary to minimize market failure. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2009, Mexico faced overproduction of social housing, bankrupt financial institutions, and social housing developers, and more than 5 million abandoned homes in Mexican cities. We argue that the results of the social housing experiment demonstrate a need for coordinated action to align fiscal, financial, and regulatory instruments to create a more resilient system of social housing provision.