Continuity of Informal Urbanization in Metropolitan Poverty Areas, Development Hindrance and Housing Policy Deficit: Cuernavaca, Mexico

Abstract

This paper explains why, two years before the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, urban dwellers living in poverty in Mexico and Cuernavaca continue having the informal land market as the fundamental route of access to the housing in a period in which mortgage credit has had the greatest expansion in history. Informal employment and wages below 2.6 times the minimum wage are identified as causes of their exclusion from market supply, while federal subsidy programs for informal workers have a low impact and do not affect land prices. The crisis of 2009 meant the stagnation of an apparent advance of the formal on the informal urbanization. For the case study, the association between poverty and economic and urban informality is verified, while data from an applied survey provide details about the characteristics of the inhabitants, their satisfaction at becoming homeowners, progressivity in the housing construction, their level of access to micro-financing for housing improvements and personal expenses, and of their residential mobility.