CDMX International Social Housing Programs

If you are a citizen of the United States – in other words, either you 1) were born and raised in the U.S., and grew up learning American customs, vernacular, folklore, and popular culture; or 2) were not born in the U.S., but worked very hard to earn your citizenship by meticulously studying its customs, history, geography, and Constitution – you are probably familiar with the concept of the “American Dream.” Or maybe you’re not a U.S. citizen at all: maybe you’re a resident staying temporarily in the country for school or work; maybe you’re just visiting; maybe you’ve never even set foot in the United States. In that case, there is still a fair chance you’ve at least heard of the American Dream. Considering that the United States is the largest exporter of mass media in the world, it should come as no surprise that so many people from all over the world have become at least somewhat familiar with American customs, distorted as they may be, from the consumption of American media.

The American Dream is the national ethos of the United States. More than just a collection of shared ideals (e.g., democracy, liberty, opportunity, equality, and justice), it is also the idea that, through dedication and hard work, anyone can climb the ladder of upward mobility to achieve prosperity for herself and her family and set a higher starting point for her children. Of course, what exactly defines the American Dream is not the same for every U.S. citizen; many, willingly or not, do not conform to the ideas most typically associated with that ethos. One of the most common ideas associated with the American Dream is home ownership. In theory, if you work hard enough, eventually you will have the resources you need to buy a house for yourself and your family. Your house is your own private property, to the extent that you have great freedom to do what you want with it and on it. Owning a home is considered a significant indicator and source of personal freedom, as well as of personal wealth.

Based on these ideas, at least one other fact seems clear: in the United States, housing is considered a commodity to be earned. For most Americans, this is a given. But what if you were to ask a random U.S. citizen, “do you consider housing a commodity to be earned, or a basic human right?” Alternatively, you might ask, “regardless of whether or not you think it is treated as such in your country, do you think decent, affordable shelter should be considered a basic human right?” After asking questions like these to a U.S. citizen, consider asking the same questions of citizens from other countries: perhaps Mexicans, Canadians, Britons, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Iranians, etc. It is possible that the range of responses will be quite variable.

In his guest lecture for the Common Ground studio on September 25, 2020, Santiago Tolosa compared the state of “social housing” programs in two major international cities: Mexico City and Los Angeles. In both cities, keeping pace with the demand for adequate housing is a formidable challenge, and has been for decades. However, the specific nature of the problems facing each city is distinct in several ways; this may reflect the distinct cultural approaches to housing in Mexico and the United States. In fact, Tolosa began his lecture by contrasting the definitions of social housing in each city.

In Mexico City, social housing is provided to lower- and middle-class demographics facing economic hardships, with the simple purpose of helping them to secure a home. Here, the fundamental idea behind social housing is to provide economically disadvantaged households the tools of opportunity they need to achieve upward mobility, expand upon their families, and have a secure and sustainable (that is, enduring) safe haven. By contrast, social housing in Los Angeles is provided to a narrower demographic of people (e.g., veterans, seniors, youth, families, and those struggling with mental illness and/or substance abuse) that, due to economic hardships, have become chronically homeless. Here, social housing appears to be, in practice and perhaps by design, little more than an emergency last resort to accommodate those who are most at risk of homelessness because of the barriers that prevent them from acquiring decent market-rate housing. These barriers include rising rents and short supply, as well as institutional racism and its enduring legacy.

A major issue with the term “social housing” is that it is not well defined or commonly used outside the academic literature, especially not in the United States. One basic definition of social housing is that it is a form of public housing provided on a not-for-profit basis (either by the state, an NGO, or some community agency). Furthermore, it must be affordable, accessible, and able to meet the housing needs of both middle-income and low-income households.

Based on Tolosa’s lecture, however, it is difficult to label the Los Angeles response (or, perhaps by extension, the U.S. response) to affordable housing needs as being genuinely pursuant to even the most basic goals of social housing. With demographic and socioeconomic changes in Los Angeles going back decades, many vulnerable residents have faced displacement. With rents rising and supply unable to keep up with demand, the City has often resorted to what Tolosa identified as a “Containment Plan,” whereby homeless residents are relocated to the infamous Skid Row district, which has effectively become the City’s “dumping ground” for addicts, the unemployed, the disabled, and other “undesirable” populations struggling with chronic homelessness. This Containment Plan has become part of a vicious cycle: as mental health services and public housing programs have lost funding, and as central city neighborhoods have gentrified, local police have implemented anti-crime programs that disproportionately target homeless populations, charging them for minor offenses like littering or jaywalking. When fines aren’t paid off, offenders are taken to jail, and then released to Skid Row.

To be fair, Mexico City’s approach to social housing is far from perfect and has faced numerous logistical challenges, as Tolosa outlined in his lecture. For example, the “mini-casa” program in place from 2005 to 2010 faced problems related to its small unit footprint, inflexible layout, and lack of appliances. In Los Angeles, however, the social housing guidelines have problems of their own: not only do they change frequently, but their strict requirements, together with bureaucratic red tape, have made the units expensive to produce and created an unacceptably long process that does nothing to help mitigate a growing problem. If social housing units are expensive and logistically difficult to produce, developers will be very unwilling to build them at the rates needed to meet demand, especially since social housing is not produced for profit. This has created serious problems for Los Angeles that are not being answered.

Many of these issues identified in the lecture can be tied back to the idea that housing itself is framed differently in diverse contexts. In the United States especially, housing is considered a market commodity to be earned, rather than a fulfillment of a basic human right to shelter. While this is more or less true in Mexico as well, their approach seems to be far more adept at recognizing the importance of housing as a foundation for building a family, finding and holding onto employment, and achieving upward mobility. Furthermore, in Mexico, social housing is inclusive of both low-income and middle-income populations.

In the U.S., by contrast, public and political antagonism toward social housing (and, in many respects, to social welfare in general) has made it exceptionally difficult to maintain a strong, sustainable, well-funded, and inclusive social housing paradigm. The result is a system much like the one seen in Los Angeles – one that cannot keep up with demand and effectively looks the other way as vulnerable populations fall down the rabbit hole of chronic homelessness. To speak once more of the “American Dream,” the idea that owning the perfect home can come as a reward to any citizen that works hard enough for it would seem like a cruel joke to those whose wages cannot afford them rent; if they cannot pay the rent, they risk eviction; if they’ve nowhere to go, they go for the streets; with no shelter – a place to keep clean and protected from the elements – their chances of holding onto a job fall apart; with no job, they have no means of affording shelter, and the vicious cycle repeats itself. The American Dream assumes homeownership must be earned through upward mobility. But how can upward mobility be achieved without a home?

Tolosa’s lecture fits very well within the broader goals of the Common Ground studio. The studio itself is a transdisciplinary project (combining architectural perspectives with planning perspectives) that aims to study the issue of social housing across three years of research, with focus on three “analogous, but unique cities,” beginning with Mexico City in the first year, before progressing on to Los Angeles in the second year and Phoenix in the third. The lecture focuses on issues of social housing relevant to both LA and Mexico City, and speaks directly to the unique challenges and obstacles that make it difficult to adequately meet the housing needs of residents in either city. These are challenges that the Common Ground studio seeks to address, via the combined talents of architecture and urban planning students, and the innovative ideas they bring to the table.