The qualitative problen in the low-income habitat production in México City: qualitative analysis of the low-income housing

Abstract

The 63% of the housing built in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of México, has been made the inhabitants themselves, who without any support of State and with limited resources, have built up over decades outside the law. In order to solve this problem, in the nineties changes to the Mexican Constitution were made by the government, to involve the private sector in the construction and financing of Social Housing and therefore be able to satisfy the increasing demand. After ten years that these changes were made, the residents remains being the main actor, if no longer in the construction of their habitat itself, in the continuing suitability and transformation. This coupled with the high selfhelp building housing, not only denotes an action that continues to be conducted outside law, but the lack of quality of housing produced by the formal sector. Despite the fact that one of the goals by the Mexican Government has been fulfilled: meet the demand in terms of quantity, the quality of the formal production is questionable in the absence of a adaptation between the housing structures and characteristics of those living. Being the resident the main actor in the production of low-income housing, either produced by real state companies or self-help produced by the same users, this paper shows the results of an analysis of habitability of social housing made in Mexico City, where we compared both types of production, from the view of those who inhabit and consistently adapt their homes.