Abandoned Homes in Tijuana Need Rescue Plan El Jefazo - The Fulano Forum
go to original February 2, 2015

Abandoned Homes Plague Tijuana's Outlying Suburbs (KPBSSanDiego)

TIJUANA - The State Council of the Baja California Real Estate Professionals urged the federal and state government to implement a rescue program for the more than 250,000 vacant homes estimated to exist in Tijuana because the owners or mortgage lenders left them abandoned when jobs were lost.

Mario Olguín González, president of the State Council, reported that according to the most recent census, the number of abandoned homes in Tijuana has reached 250,000, due to the increase in unemployment from the closing of businesses during the period from 2008 to 2014.

During that period the unemployment rate in Baja California has been between 5 and 6 percent. According to Olguín González, a large share of the abandoned homes are of people who got mortgages from INFONAVIT and banks, but when they lost their jobs, the opted to return to their places of origin or cross into the United States.

Most of the homes are located in the peripheral areas of the city, southwest of the city. Many of the homes have been turned into social risks, so a rescue program is urgent. The proposal is that the federal and state government resell them at a low price, or at least repair them so they could be rented, he said.

Fulano's comment: Don't be surprised by the reported unemployment rate in Mexico. Mexico reports unemployment figures on an entirely different basis than the United States. In the United States, the unemployment rate is the number of people actively  looking for work divided by the sum of the number of people working and unemployed but looking for work. In Mexico, only the formal sector is measured for unemployment. That is, the number of people looking for factory or professional jobs. The huge informal sector in Mexico is not counted, and that is 40% of the population. The true unemployment rate in Mexico is well over 20%. Not counted in Mexico are farm workers, construction workers, street vendors, etc.

See the original at The Fulano Forum

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