Increased Housing for Border States in Mexico

Submitted by webmaster on Thu, 04/27/2006

Mexico’s national housing comissioner, Carlos Gutiérrez Ruiz, announced last week that 12% of the CONAFOVI’s housing loans will be assigned to the northwest states in Mexico (Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora y Sinaloa), an equivalent of $22,000 million pesos.
In the current government period, housing has doubled in this region growing from 178,168 new housing units between 1995-1999 to 363,922 in 2001-2005. In Baja California, housing construction tripled from 49,540 new housing units to 143,297 in 2001-2005.

In an interview this week in the “El Financiero” newspaper, Gutiérrez commented on a new law that is being reviewed in the Senate this week that will transform CONAFOVI into the National Housing Commission, a decentralized organization with an assigned budget that would report directly to the president. Currently, CONAFOVI is part of the Social Development Secretariat (SEDESOL). This change would come along with the creation of a National Housing Council, formed by 50 members of civic and business sectors, as well as state and federal representatives. The Commission would be free to work directly with other goverment units to coordinate electrical, transport issues surrounding housing projects.

Gutiérrez mentioned the need for urban planning, to design not only neighborhoods, but cities and called for the creation of a federal urban planning comission to coordinate with the National Housing Commission in the planning of cities. He mentioned that the lack of urban density (horizontal development) that predominates in cities across Mexico costs the government great sums of money to establish roads, police, infrastructure and garbage removal in extensive areas as opposed to high density areas (vertical development). Gutiérrez mentioned today it is up to the local governments to define urban density that goes from 40 to 60 housing units per hectare, compared to Madrid where the density is 300 to 350 and Shanghai, where there are around 800 houses per hectare.

See also CONAFOVI’s press release:
http://www.conafovi.gob.mx/prensa/boletines/Abril20_2006.htm