PAN lawmaker proposes adding gentrification to Mexico City housing law

Mexico City lawmaker Frida Guillén has proposed formally including gentrification in the city’s housing law, describing legal recognition as a first step toward making the problem visible.

The PAN legislator’s proposal defines gentrification as the spatial transformation and restructuring of an urban area through renovation or intervention. Such changes attract people with greater purchasing power and directly or indirectly displace the area’s original residents, who are generally on lower incomes.

The initiative would also promote action by the city’s government to combat the phenomenon. It was sent to committees for analysis and consideration.

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Recognizing gentrification in law is a first step toward making visible a phenomenon that affects different sectors of the population and territories of the capital in different ways.

Guillén argued that gentrification affects different sections of the population and different parts of the capital in unequal ways. She said information, indicators and analytical criteria could help replace isolated responses with a comprehensive public policy addressing both the causes and consequences of the city’s transformation.

“The initiative recognizes the need to incorporate gentrification into the local legal framework as a tool to strengthen housing and urban development policies, guarantee the right to the city, and ensure that Mexico City’s evolution does not compromise the permanence, identity and roots of the communities that have historically given it life,” the proposal states.

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The initiative recognizes the need to incorporate gentrification into the local legal framework as a tool to strengthen housing and urban development policies, guarantee the right to the city, and ensure that Mexico City’s evolution does not compromise the permanence, identity and roots of the communities that have historically given it life.