Affordable housing as a right and as a commodity: Lessons from the history and development of Mexico’s INFONAVIT

Abstract

The current housing unaffordability and scarcity crises shows that housing finance programs in the United States are no longer enough to provide reasonable access to decent housing. Current American policy and incentives entrench the role of housing as a commodity, preferring the consolidation of private investors, and scarcity via regulatory blocks to more construction. A stronger policy stance that treats housing as a right could manifest in the US similarly to Mexico’s INFONAVIT. Throughout its 50-year long history, INFONAVIT has spearheaded the massive development of affordable housing in Mexico with considerably fewer resources and in an environment of weaker institutions. Mexico’s tumultuous transition from an import substitution industrialization with authoritarian leadership, to an export-oriented economy with young democratic institutions pushed INFONAVIT to become more financially specialized, politically independent, and efficient. Weathering the changing politics, the Institute became a world-class public financial agency, though mistakes from past experimentation and Mexico’s labor precarity and poor enforceability of the law limit INFONAVIT’s power. This thesis builds on existing historical documentation of the Institute, synthesizing primary and secondary sources, legal documents, and academic journal articles to produce a condensed institutional history of the Institute. In the end, INFONAVIT offers lessons for policymakers on practical means available to frame housing as a right while participating in capitalist institutions.