Landlord and Tenant: Housing the Poor in Urban Mexico

Hundreds of millions of tenants live in Third World cities. In many cities, they constitute the majority of households. Despite the numerical importance of this segment of the population, there exists only limited information on who these people are and their living conditions. Information is even more limited on those who provide rental accommodation. Landlord and Tenantis the first book written in English to discuss rental housing in the developing world, particularly in Latin America. The book summarizes and analyzes current knowledge about rental housing in Latin America, and compares this information with the situation in other areas of the developing world. The authors use survey data and in-depth interviews to compile a detailed portrayal of landlords and tenants in Mexico. They explore the reasons that landlords invest, or fail to invest, in rental housing and the reasons that tenants move into rental housing and into peripheral self-help ownership. Therelationship between landlords and tenants is examined, with an explanation of how the state intervenes in that relationship.Landlordand Tenantalso reviews Mexican housing policy, with its clear bias towards increasing home ownership, and explores ways of improving the quality and stock of rental accommodation.