A New Minimum For Housing Rights?

While the Mexican constitution does contemplate adequate housing as a human and citizen right, the reality is very different. Despite the presence of federal and state-level public institutions, such as INFONAVIT, providing relatively accessible housing credits, a segment of Mexico’s population continues to live in conditions that fall outside of what UN-Habitat considers to be the seven elements of adequate housing: legal protection against unlawful eviction, physical protection against human and environmental hazards, access to public services and quality infrastructure, economic feasibility (measured in terms of rent or mortgage payments representing no more than 30 percent of the tenants’ combined income), accessibility to people with disabilities, alignment with tenants’ rights to express their cultural identity and a location that enables access to employment, health services and schools. UN-Habitat, as quoted in a report by Inmobiliare, calculates that at least 38.4 percent of Mexicans are housed in conditions that fail to meet these requirements. 

SEDATU and SCT are now looking for avenues to address this need for change. Together, these two public institutions have formed the National Advisory Committee on the Normalization Of Territorial Organization and Urban Development (CCNNOTDU). This committee held its first meeting of the year digitally last week and approved the application of a new NOM to be enforced on the evaluation of housing conditions and the construction of new public housing projects. This new NOM seeks to emphasize the aforementioned constitutional right to adequate housing by making sure that all standards are aligned with the minimums established by UN-Habitat. The timing of this ruling is also meant to address whatever new housing needs might arise in the socioeconomic aftershock of COVID-19 shutdowns. Committee President Víctor Hugo Hofmann calls this NOM “a further bet in favor of the currently existing legal concept of adequate housing, which finds its basis in international human rights agreements and in the intention of continuing to guarantee the opportunity to access adequate housing. These opportunities must not be lost.”