Sunday, November 26, 2017

"Mexico promised affordable housing for all. Instead it created many rapidly decaying slums"

LAT:
Sixteen years ago, Mexico embarked on a monumental campaign to elevate living standards for its working-class masses.

The government teamed with private developers to launch the largest residential construction boom in Latin American history. Global investors — the World Bank, big foundations, Wall Street firms — poured billions of dollars into the effort.

Vast housing tracts sprang up across cow pastures, farms and old haciendas. From 2001 to 2012, an estimated 20 million people — one-sixth of Mexico’s population — left cities, shantytowns and rural ranchos for the promise of a better life.

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The program has devolved into a slow-motion social and financial catastrophe

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It is believed to be the largest fraud in Mexican history.