Subsidized Housing in Mexico: A Good Idea Turns Into a Disaster Patricia Rey Mallen - IBTimes
go to original October 8, 2013

La Trinidad was expected to have 205,000 unites in use by 2010. Barely 45,000 are inhabited as of 2013. (zumpango.net)

Stepping into La Trinidad suburb in the town of Zumpango, Mexico, is like entering a ghost world. Streets of identical rows of houses line up, but there is barely anyone walking around. La Trinidad is one of the Ciudades Bicentenario, a failed government project launched in 2007 to improve subsidized housing in the country.

La Trinidad was the first of five projected Ciudades Bicentenario, or Bicentennial Cities. (Mexico's War of Independence began in 1810.) Of the 73,400 units that were built, 29,300 are empty. And those that are still in use have turned into a place to run away from, or to resign to live in. Antonina López, one of the few inhabitants of La Trinidad, jokes when remembering the day she moved in. “It was so small, we thought we only had room for either the beds or us. How disappointing,” she told the Spanish newspaper El País.

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