Housing squeeze play


In Tijuana and other Mexican cities, the sprawling tracts of small houses "create enormous extensions of the city and call for extremely expensive infrastructure," said Sara Topelson, coordinator of the Mexico City-based Center for Research and Documentation on Housing.

Many of the issues surfacing in Tijuana have played out for years in the United States.

"They're making the same mistakes we made," said Lawrence Herzog, a professor of urban planning at San Diego State University, in reference to large housing tracts built on the far edges of cities. "They're not energy-efficient. They're built far from urban activity centers."

Many of Tijuana's architects say the city is missing an opportunity to be creative in solving the housing crisis.

"They have this idea, tabula rasa, to come and cut, and build overnight, without understanding that a city is built by layers, through processes, through a series of sociocultural conditions that evolve," said René Peralta, a Tijuana architect.

Federal Sen. Héctor Osuna Jaime, also an architect, grappled with Tijuana's housing problems and other growing pains when he was mayor of the city from 1992 to 1995.

"There are lots of utopian proposals that seem very attractive. I myself could come up with 20 of them," Osuna said. "But the fact is that you hit up against an economic reality, and that's what dictates what you can do."

Tight quarters

In other parts of Mexico, even other parts of Baja California, the peso stretches further, buying more land and a bigger house. But in Tijuana, the market rarely offers houses within reach of the poorest residents, and thus they are often forced to rent or live in makeshift shacks on plots without services.

Speculation, the high cost of infrastructure, and the hilly terrain have pushed up land costs in the city.

Across Mexico, potential buyers who earn less than $360 per month can qualify for a mortgage of up to 161,000 pesos ($14,120 at current exchange rates) through the federal agency Infonavit. In most parts of the country, that is enough to buy a house. But in Tijuana, many private developers are reluctant to build housing for that amount, saying they cannot make a profit.

Urbi did build such housing last year, raising 1,000 one-bedroom units measuring about 300 square feet apiece. That led to scathing criticism from the local architects association.

"To me they're nothing more than motor homes," said David Navarro, the group's president. "Imagine a family living in 300 square feet of space, eating, sleeping, washing, doing chores, watching television. It's impossible. There are strong psychological repercussions, not just physical ones."

Like their neighbors on Calle de los Abetos, Guzmán and her family are making the best of their small space. The one-bedroom duplex is what they could afford on her husband's $95 a week earnings at the factory, where he assembles wood furniture for export to the United States.

His age and weekly pay qualified him for a loan last year of 155,300 pesos, about $15,000 at the then-prevailing exchange rate, from Infonavit. About $70 a month is deducted from his paycheck.


