The federal government is now aiming to build 1.1 million new homes across Mexico during this six-year term of government (2024-30), increasing its goal by 100,000 dwellings.
Octavio Romero, general director of the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit), announced the more ambitious target at an event in Matamoros, Tamulipas, on Friday.
“At the beginning of the administration we had a goal of building 1 million homes. Now that global circumstances propel us to accelerate [the] Plan México [economic initiative] we will build 1.1 million homes during this six-year period of government,” he said.
The government’s home-building initiative is officially called the Housing for Well-Being Program. Improvements to more than 1.5 million existing homes will also be carried out as part of the program.
The plan aims to increase the supply of affordable housing in Mexico, where rental and home prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Each of the new homes will cost between 700,000 and 1.2 million pesos (about US $35,000-$60,000), President Claudia Sheinbaum said in late 2024. Zero-interest or low-interest loans will generally be repayable over a period of 15 to 20 years.
Romero’s announcement in Matamoros came a week after Sheinbaum announced a range of “programs and actions” related to Plan México, initiatives whose ultimate goal is to strengthen the Mexican economy and make Mexico more self-sufficient amid the uncertainty generated by the United States’ on-again, off-again tariff policies under President Donald Trump.
One of the 18 initiatives announced by the president on April 3 is aimed at accelerating the construction of new dwellings and increasing access to government-backed home loans.
Speaking at another housing-focused event in Guadalupe, Zacatecas, on Saturday, Romero said that Infonavit will oversee the construction of 600,000 new homes during the current period of government, while the National Housing Commission (Conavi) will manage projects to build 500,000 dwellings.
Infonavit’s target has been increased by 100,000 while Conavi’s remains the same.
Romero, CEO of state oil company Pemex during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 2018-24 presidency, said in Zacatecas that the new Infonavit homes will be 60 square meters and built in locations “close to work centers.”
“They will be safe, efficient, comfortable and affordable,” the Infonavit chief said.
“They will have all the basic services, with the required infrastructure [including] green areas and sporting and social facilities,” Romero said.
At a third housing-focused event in as many days, Sheinbaum said in Rincón de Romos, Aguascalientes, on Sunday that the new homes are “for those who have the least, for those who have never had the never had the opportunity to have a home in our country.”
Zero-interest loans to purchase the homes will be available to hundreds of thousands of people on low salaries.
Sheinbaum said workers who earn a maximum of two times the minimum wage — or around 17,000 pesos (about US $850) per month — will be eligible to buy the new homes.
“We’re making housing a human right, a social right, because for many years social housing was seen as a business,” she said.
Conavi general director Rodrigo Chávez said that seniors, single mothers, people with disabilities, Indigenous persons and young people will be among those who will have first dibs on the homes to be built by the institution he leads.
“Sixty square meter apartments will be built for families, [we’re] thinking about three bedrooms and [there will be] a special prototype [home] for young people of 40 square meters,” he said.
In Matamoros on Friday, Sheinbaum railed against corruption in Mexico’s housing institutes prior to the López Obrador administration. She also denounced the construction of homes “without services” in locations far from urban centers.
Many government-built homes across Mexico are abandoned due to a range of factors including their location, insecurity and homeowners’ inability to service the loans they took out.
More than 4 million “unpayable loans” were issued by government housing institutes before 2018, Sheinbaum said.
Workers “paid and paid and paid” but their debt only grew, said the president, whose government is providing debt relief for mortgagors who were granted loans whose terms are now considered unfair.
“Before 2018, Infonavit provided loans and supposed access to housing with unpayable loans. People asked for an Infonavit loan and had access to a home on some occasions but not others because there was a lot of corruption in those times,” Sheinbaum said.
“And the workers continued paying and paying and paying and they never stopped paying … [but] in the majority of cases more and more was owed. … That’s not a loan, that’s usury, that’s theft,” she said.
Sheinbaum: construction of homes will create 600,000 jobs this year
Sheinbaum said in Aguascalientes on Sunday that the government will build 200,000 homes this year, 20,000 more than the figure she cited during her April 3 announcement of the 18 “programs and actions” associated with Plan México.
The construction projects will create 600,000 jobs, she said.
The new homes will be built across Mexico, including in the three states — Tamaulipas, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes — where the government held housing-focused events over the past three days.
With reports from El Economista and El Financiero
