Short Term Rentals in Mexico City: Rethinking Urban Displacement through the emergent lens of Urban Extraction
A summative submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Masters Degree at The London School of Economics and Political Science in International Social and Public Policy (Development)
ABSTRACT:
The main aim of this summative is to understand the role of Mexico’s government in fomenting and institutionalising the sharing economy of short-term rentals (STRs) in its capital, against the backdrop of the ongoing political project of the financialization of housing in Mexico. Furthermore, expanding upon the financialization of housing literature within the context of the exorbitant growth of buy-let-investments and short-term rentals in Mexico City, I will be incorporating the evolving and novel conceptual framework of urban extraction to further inform and contextualise the ongoing financialization of housing in Mexico City and its role increase in housing speculation and commercialization of housing in Mexico City. Thus, an Urban Extraction of sorts that leads towards a market that displaces urban residents and exacerbates existing socio spatial residential segregation. I will provide a brief historical context of urban housing policies against the socioeconomic transformations wrought by Mexico’s structural shifts in the 1980s and the contraction of government intervention in economic affairs and the subsequent structural shifts that transformed urban housing development eventual emergence of housing marketization and its modern impact on the burgeoning sharing economy that has allowed for the proliferation of STRs in Mexico City. Ultimately, this paper seeks to provide critique of Airbnb's sharing business model as it relates to buyers repurposing their homes to profit rather than a social good and providing potential policy considerations from the global north that may be applicable in ameliorating the impacts of STRs in Mexico City.
INTRODUCTION
Mexico’s predominant housing development model of financialization has led to the emergence of deficient and unsustainable urban fabrics within its capital of Mexico City. Most notably, in the recent proliferation of Short-Term Rentals by way of Airbnb and similar ‘shared economy’ applications. Mexico is one of many Latin American countries that have undergone a profound economic restructuring of their institutions to limit state intervention in favour of incentivizing market growth. (Reyes, 2020) Private production affected Mexico’s housing supply and vast changes in housing reforms which ultimately led to changes like credit liberalisation in the mid to late 1990s. In short, the financialization of housing in Mexico led to “the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements, and narratives at various scales, resulting in a structural transformation of economies, firms (including financial institutions), states, and households”. (Aalbers, 2017) (Reyes, 2020) Coupled with lax regulation in capping short term rentals, as is often seen in the Global North, Mexico City residents face a rapidly transforming urban space marked by a tight housing market and socio spatial residential segregation. Considering ongoing policy developments, most notably with Mexico City entering a public-private partnership with both Airbnb and UNESCO, in supporting tourism aimed at creative entrepreneurial professionals, addressing the deleterious impacts of STRs within the local housing policy context has fallen short. The subnational government of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has yet to address impacts of STRs as a contributing factor in the emergence of tourism driven housing precarity and displacement among its urban residents. Short term rentals have transformed the urban geography of Mexico City and little literature exists in the Latin American context to address the immediate effects of STRs on rental housing supply and its variegated impacts on the reallocation of existing housing stock “from the long term rental market and towards a privately owned housing”, (Reyes, 2020) which serves to increase rents in an already competitive and exorbitantly priced housing market.
The main body of the paper first examines emergence of neoliberal governance and provides a historical account of the processes that have led to the growing financialisation of housing policy in Mexico, notably with the inception of INFONAVIT and failure of private production in building housing provisions; second, includes the state’s role in the legitimization of short term rentals in Mexico City and vested interests local governance in attracting global capital at the expense of urban residents who are experiencing housing precarity. This portion of the essay will delve into the policy failures in addressing short term rentals and the impacts short term rentals have had as of late in the Mexican capital. The third and last section will aim to provide an alternative theoretical framework that is emergent in Latin American scholarship to understand the capital accumulation of housing and will provide an overview of potential policy regulatory solutions that have been implemented in the global north. It is worth noting that scholarship on short term rentals in Mexico and the global south is scarce and still evolving. Considering the lack of literature, I will be providing a potentially new and emergent conceptual framework from which to analyse the ongoing co-option of housing as urban extraction. As such the conceptual framework of financialisaton serves as a vehicle of political and economic context of how restructuring gave way to private incentivisation, and the urban extraction framework will be able to offer a theoretical framework from which to understand the production of “exclusive urban territories” facilitated and abetted by financialisaton. (Streule, 2022)
Neoliberal Governance: Housing as a new iteration of Financialization
In 1982, Mexico was experiencing intense economic hardship. Its debt crisis had reached a fever pitch and like much of Latin America, was amid what is known as its Decada Perdida or “Lost Decade”. Following systems, the establishment of alternative sets of economic development policies known as the Washington consensus, Mexico, at the behest of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, followed suit with a structural overhaul of state intervention in economic matters.1 Mexico’s foreign debt had exceeded its earning power and were at a loss for how to repay it. At the best of institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Mexico, as a debtor country, was encouraged to substantially curtail their existing social programs and government intervention to encourage and spur “market led growth” (Reyes, 2020). The impact of Mexico’s welfare contraction in the name of “autonomous market led efficiency” conjunction with an increase in private means of production had an immeasurable and veritable impact on both housing reform and housing production in the country in the decades that followed. These impacts materialised in the form of theoretical frameworks centred around the marked increase in the marketization of housing. Most notably with Mexico’s housing supply being reshaped government and private actors by way of the National Workers' Housing Fund Institute, Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores, otherwise known as INFONAVIT2, “financial instruments such as mortgage securitization, lack of oversight in creditworthiness'' that ultimately resulted in a housing debacle centering around the mortgages given to the working poor, people who didn't qualify for loans from housing investment and debt, rather than direct profits from housing development,” As aptly noted by Reyes, investors in housing markets were able to evade consequences whereas homeowners were unable to. As such, the politics around the construction of affordable housing
1 The term "Washington Consensus" was coined in 1989 by economist John Williamson of PIIE. He was describing a list of policies that had gained support among Latin American policymakers in response to the macroeconomic turbulence and debt crisis of the early to mid-1980s
2 INFONAVIT: federal organisation that was established in 1972 to provide worker housing credit in Mexico to maquiladora employees, and other individuals employed in the formal sector of the country’s economy. became a new frontier for capital accumulation whilst “abandoning the conceptual meaning of housing as a social good”. (Reyes, 2020)
In short, the social function of housing in Mexico is envisioned in the name of market efficiency and called into consideration who makes and unmakes spatial value with consideration to the spatial value of housing. In reviewing the existing literature in relation to the making and unmaking of space, Ananya Roy notes in Urban Informality: The production of Space and Practice of Planning that “the deregulation of political economies is inextricably linked to the deregulation of space”. The capture of the housing production by the markets leads to a social reproduction of housing poverty in a city that is already housing burdened with an estimated Mexico needs to build 800,000 housing units/yr. to keep up with demand (Madry, 2022) of its uses and land uses that were once considered informal are now formalised by the state while others which in turn leads to the professionalisation
The Role of the State in Legitimizing Short Term Rentals
Mexico City is the capital of Mexico and has a population of nearly 10 million people. As experienced by various other cities in the country, Mexico underwent a comprehensive political and economic project of reconfiguration of housing provisions. With the restructuring of housing policy in Mexico since the mid 1980’s it has essentially introduced and reshaped housing policies into a business model, commodifying access to housing via an access to credit. (Nascimento Neto and Salinas Arreortua, 2019) The proliferation of short-term rentals can thus be seen as a modern iterative process of these historical processes. Buttressed by Mexican urban housing policies, local governance in Mexico City has seemed to confirm and legitimise transforming “people’s homes into abstract financial assets traded on the stock market — money-making machines for the already more-than-wealthy. (Reyes, 2020) The Mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum entered a public private partnership with Airbnb and Unesco.
The guide highlights landmarks, historical sites, and neighbourhoods of cultural note in the capital. Airbnb/CDMX government (source:mexiconewsdaily)
The Mexico City Public-Private Partnership with Airbnb and UNESCO had laid bare its vested interests of government institutions inviting global capital to Mexico City and to open the doors to the booming tourist rental business. Highlighting the state’s role in allowing buy-to-let investors to buy or repurpose their properties to meet and encourage the ‘creative tourism’ demand. The Mexico City Public-Private Partnership with Airbnb and UNESCO promises to develop and promote projects that will empower the local tourist communities but at the expense of whom? Economic restructuring in Mexico has mobilised local governments to become more concerned with their local economies. As such, local policymaker loyalties may not be in preserving local areas for its urban inhabitants but more so, as the literature argues, “economic development and competitiveness have become the primary imperative that drives local policy-making.” (Purcell, 2002) As such, when Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was asked if her local administration was aware of the presence Airbnb short term rentals were having on local rental prices, the concerns went unaddressed. As noted by the General Coordinator of Advisors and International Affairs in Mexico City, Diana Alarcon “Remote workers have a lot to contribute to Mexico City and that is why this alliance is so important. With Airbnb we will improve the options that the city offers. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that Mexico City adapts and innovates in the face of adverse scenarios, such as the pandemic.” The prevailing neoliberal paradigm of housing as a financial asset rather than a social good is thus institutionalised and legitimised to increase Mexico City’s regional and global economic competitiveness. (Reyes, 2020) Supported by Set and noted by Mark Purcell’s critique by the Right to the City, various cities in the Global South, Mexico City including have undergone a governing restructure that has ultimately given way to supply oriented competition of their housing stock and moving away from demand-oriented redistribution of their housing stock.
‘Accumulation through Dispossession’: Rethinking Short Term Rentals through the Urban Extraction
Mexico City at the forefront of Urban Extraction by way of STR led displacement. Mexico City is a sprawling urban metropolis often cited as the most populous city in North America, Mexico City faces salient urban challenges as it relates to the increased and marked financialization of its housing market via the increase in short term rentals. its ability to provide adequate housing stock to its residents who are largely urban poor. Mexico City is ultimately a city with “high social and collective value” (Ugarte, n.d.) “However, the city is an asset with a high social and collective value, as well as space in which access to, and the quality of, basic goods and services are marked by profound inequalities.” (Ugarte, n.d.) As such, Mexico City leaders have shifted their policy orientation for housing towards increased competition and high tourism. Effectively exacerbating existing inequities in socio spatial residential segregation and housing costs. The spatial value of what was once a city dominated by urban informality has been transformed into a formalized spatial order benefiting real estate speculators at the expense of subordinate groups who continue to exist in liminal spaces of exclusion. (Roy, 2012) The exclusion Mexicans are facing in Mexico City neighbourhoods can be further unpacked by the Lefebvre’s notion of who owns the Right to the City. Are Mexicans able to engage in the social and urban production of the urban space they inhabit or are power relations fundamentally working against them and towards a “new governance ethos driven particularly by the imperative of capitalist accumulation” (Purcell, 2002). Mexicans are detailing their exclusion from urban society in spades and have given air to an emergent movement in Mexico City that eschews government legitimization of what many see as urban extraction.
Mexicans in the capital contend with various factors that contribute to a persistence of precariousness. Despite local and popular neighbourhoods, some of which are in peripheral locations and others in the city centre, they have experienced considerable improvements in housing conditions, transportation, and overall improved basic infrastructure, despite this the social context as noted by (Ziccardi, 2014) continues to be problematic and at the mercy of those global capital. It must be noted, however, that the realities for many Mexicans despite these improvements are that urban peripheries still exist and are still being inhabited by Mexicans who are facing a scarce housing market and substandard living conditions. The territorial segregation (Ziccardi, 2014) of Mexicans has only been exacerbated by the proliferation of Short-Term Rentals with recent figures noting considerable housing spikes throughout the capital. According to Homie, a prominent real estate platform in Mexico City, Rents have increased by almost eight percent across the capital. (Green, 2022) With upscale neighbourhoods experiencing significant price increases in 2022. Nearly 40 percent rent increases have been noted in Condesa. (Green, 2022)
Despite Mexicans voicing their concerns over the perceived gentrification in their neighbourhoods, urban displacement by way of STRs is an emergent issue in the global south. As noted by our discussions around gentrification, they should not be viewed through the euro American lens but in the same vein, it is imperative to call into question if existing gentrification frameworks in Mexico are accounting for the emergent lens of urban extraction. As noted in the texts of Garmany and Richmond, 2019 “as part of a struggle between different classes for authority over a symbolically as well as geographically central urban space which had become dominated by 'popular' uses and had to be 'recaptured' by the middle class in an effort to reorder both space and people.” The recapture of urban spaces and urban revitalization process by the middle classes is not sufficient in its framework. A conceptual framework that can marry the existing backdrop of increased financialization with the accumulation of capital in the city centre would answer far more questions. The conceptual framework of urban extractivism to reframe socio-territorial struggles as urban contestations is an interesting framework from which to tackle the rise of short-term rentals or to at least situate the issue within current struggles of housing justice in Mexico City.
Streule furthered the scholarship of urban extraction by moving beyond its forebears and expanding upon the scholarship of Argentine Scholar Maria Vasquez Duplat in which she analysed the production of exclusive urban territories in Buenos Aires. Streule’s furtherance of urban extraction is at the nexus of urban extractivism and urban contestations. Critiquing resource extraction and ensuing urban developments as ‘neocolonial’. As activists and community organisers have asserted, the rise of STRs revives discourse on neo-colonialism and how it has manifested in global north remote workers taking up considerable urban domain in Mexico City. Fleshing out Streule’s idea of urban extraction it is typically used in reference to ‘resource extraction’ in rural or peri urban contexts and the development of “prestigious urban megaprojects in Mexico City” (Streule, 2022) Following and building upon both Streule’s analysis of megaprojects in Mexico affecting water supply for indigenous communities and the coupling with Enrique Viale and Maristella Svampa, reimagined framework of extraction by making a link between neoliberal urban development and extractive processes more apparent by highlighting how extraction can be applied not just to resources but to urban land value, “extractivism has also reached the big cities. But it is not the big landowners producing soybeans, nor the mining megacompanies, but the real estate speculation that in this case causes dispossession and displacements” (Svampa & Viale,2014, p. 248) (Streule, 2022)
It is with this in mind, that the approaches of Streule, Svampa/Viale and Vazquez of how the expansion of the concept of extractivism can be applied or associated with the emergence of Short-Term Rentals. As noted by Streule, the extractive economy is inclusive of more than just raw materials and as noted in the text, the ‘gentrified city’ is often linked with urban extractivism by way of narrower accounts of extractive rent, but Short-Term Rentals represent an issue beyond the conception of rent, it represents an extractive economy in Mexico City which is engulfing entire neighbourhoods and has displaced people both, wealthy and poor, at alarming rates. A broader understanding of urban extraction in the context of Short-Term Rentals can also situate these occurrences amidst the ongoing neoliberalisation of housing and comes full circle with the historical context. As Streule notes how AIFA, a flagship development project in Mexico that would realise the construction of a new airport in Mexico City; indigenous communities mobilised against this large urban infrastructure for reasons of water shortage and protection, Water is life. Similarly, housing is life. It is with this mind, reorienting the concept of urban extraction towards the STRs and their impacts on urban transformation opens a discussion for what is at stake for residents living in places of such urban transformation and their connections to how their housing value is fundamentally tied to “the market-driven processes of extended urbanisation–understood as the broader landscapes of urbanisation”. (Arboleda 2016) It allows us to add further context to “what defending housing and basic livelihood implies.” (Streule, 2022)
POLICY CONSIDERATIONS & CONCLUSION
Substantial opposition towards the exorbitant growth of Short-Term Rentals and their platforms has led to concerns over decreases in housing affordability, housing competition and perceived safety issues. (Koster, van Ommeren and Volkhausen, 2021) The surge in popularity has led to an onslaught of local governments crafting legislation in favour of tighter regulation of STRs. In the global north, action has been noticeably swift with cities like San Francisco enacting a hotel tax (i.e. a Transient Occupancy Tax) but also a cap on the amount of days their STR can be operated as a rental, “maximum 90 rental days per year.” (Koster, van Ommeren and Volkhausen, 2021) Furthermore, a limited number of cities have recently imposed considerably stricter restrictions. In the case of potential policy considerations for Mexico City, Los Angeles would be an ideal candidate to consider for their expansive regulatory framework which has proved successful in levelling off the STRs in the city.
Unlike Los Angeles County, Mexico City is organised into 16 boroughs. Los Angeles County on the other hand is organised via municipalities and smaller cities, of which the City of Los Angeles is included in. However, like Los Angeles, who enjoys political representation for each of their municipalities, every borough, or demarcaciones territoriales in Spanish, are headed by a mayor. Thus, both cities have expansive local government powers and thus the potential for impactful legislation on curtailing or regulating STRs is high.
On November 1, 2019, Los Angeles enacted a Home-Sharing Ordinances (HSOs). Meaning that nearly 18 cities out of the 88 cities in Los Angeles County would be subject to a ban on informal vacation rentals. “Hosts renting out entire properties are now subject to the same formal regulations as regular hotels and bed and breakfasts”. (Koster, van Ommeren and Volkhausen, 2021) A notable concern which beleaguered policymakers was the impact short-term rental platforms were having on the reduction of housing supply available for both local and long-term rental markets. (Koster, van Ommeren and Volkhausen, 2021) This was inevitably leaning to increased rents throughout the city. A phenomenon occurring in Mexico City in 2022. The policy response was swift as Los Angeles City Council followed on the heels of a Los Angeles County decision in which ‘home sharing is permitted in Los Angeles if your listing is your primary residence’. The Los Angeles City Council adopted the Home-Sharing Ordinance3 and created a division within their Department of City Planning known as the Home-Sharing Unit as a regulatory and oversight centre to prevent the wholesale conversion of homes into rental properties.’ Drawing on recent research on the impacts of STRs within Los Angeles County, Quasi-experimental evidence from Airbnb in Los Angeles concluded that although the “total effect of Airbnb on property value in Los Angeles County is a modest 3.6%” which is minimal and almost negligible. The areas that are particularly attractive for tourism and where short-term rentals/Airbnb listings are high, “the effects of Airbnb are substantial. Within 2.5km of Hollywood, for example, the increase in property values is almost 15%”. (Koster, van Ommeren and Volkhausen, 2021) Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, notes that rent in Mexico City will not skyrocket as it not their government's intention, noting that digital nomads - choose to stay in expensive neighbourhoods, where the rent is already higher than other areas of the capital, such as Condesa, Roma and Polanco. But as noted by research in Los Angeles, the effects of Airbnb short term rentals were substantial enough to galvanise a policy response.
3 The legislation establishes a regulatory framework to restrict short-term rentals to one's primary residence. The Home-Sharing Ordinance requires hosts who wish to engage in short-term rentals to register with the City and post their registration number on all advertisements. Hosts must adhere to all requirements.
"We do not want rents to skyrocket in the face of this situation," she said, adding that her administration will keep monitoring the situation.” - Mayor of CDMX, Claudia Sheinbaum
This is not ignoring the problematic and persistent north and south division as it pertains to knowledge production or attempting to engage in paternalistic policy suggestions as southern knowledge and practices are equally as valid and justified. As noted by Streule, ‘practices and experiences are reduced to empirical cases to be studied, or data and local expertise to be extracted, to be inserted into Euro American theoretical models. This is not the intention in my paper. The choice of comparing policy and legislation between both cities hinges on their approximate likeness and their being ‘sister cities’. Furthermore, to make the case for possible policy suggestions that may translate to the capital of Mexico City, restrictions imposed in the county of Los Angeles are worthy of consideration as it is the most populous county in the United States, analogous to the population of Mexico City at nearly 9 million. It is a global city with the most STR listings in the United States trailing only behind New York City. It is a cultural hub and an attractive tourist destination with considerable diasporic ties to Mexico itself.
The research on short term rentals and buy to let investments as an iteration of the financialization of housing remains undertheorized and under researched, especially in the Global South. (Aalbers, 2017) The history of neoliberal reforms and state restructuring in the name of market led efficiency and growth has led to a marketization of housing and has called into question the social function of property as a social good. Existing research on the deleterious impacts of short-term rentals and the housing market is extensive in the Global North with much emphasis placed on maintaining the long-term rental housing stock in the city and preserving the character of urban neighbourhoods. And they provide a bevy of regulatory frameworks by which to ameliorate and possibly remedy existing tensions within Mexico City and the emergence of STRs. But beyond the political implications of STRs, it is critical to contextualise and situate this policy issue within a new conceptual framework that moves beyond urban displacement and through an alternative lens like urban extraction. As noted by Professor Kumar in our course, it is important to engage different terms that not only compliment but reveal how existing Euro American and broader northern academic production frameworks like gentrification or displacement limit how urban inequality manifests. Mexico City as a city that reproduces urban inequality in housing necessitates a new lens in how land value is being extracted or owned and conversely policy that can respond to the “splintered landscapes of spatial value” that marks a metropolitan region like Mexico City.
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Well written article. Too optimistic I fear for a very dire situation with these STRs and Mexico all over. The problem, as always, remains Americans - now it’s remote workers and tourists as well as Mexican officials. Sheinbaum wont fix it. People praise her. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust any politician. Maybe they can limit the number of STRs per block and district? Hard to prove corruption. Easier to prove a building or house or apartment isn’t being used for what it’s prohibited from being used.