Flight brings plight: About 25% of Juárez homes sit empty, as residents flee drug war violence

by Alejandro MartĂ*nez-Cabrera \ El Paso Times
Posted: 05/23/2011 12:00:00 AM MDT

The neighborhood of Villas Residencia has lost nearly all of its residents, leaving the door open for vandals, drug users and further violence. (Special to the Times)
Click photo to enlargeSisters Laura and Silvia are two of the few residents who have remained in... (Special to the Times)«12»›› View photos: Juarez - Patterns of growth and abandonment

JUAREZ -- Most of the houses in Villas Residencial have no doors, no windowpanes, and graffiti covers graffiti on every wall. Everything that could be resold -- electrical wiring, sewer lids, anything made out of copper -- is gone.

Rows upon rows of houses have been abandoned in this housing project located on the southeast side of the city. People left because of the lack of security or the lack of work. The few who stayed have nowhere else to go.

"Back home, you either work at the mines or with the narcos," said a maquiladora worker from Parral who preferred not to be identified.

About a quarter of the homes in Juárez are empty due to the massive exodus of people who have fled the current wave of violence, and the urban planning mistakes of the past. Now, the abandoned neighborhoods attract vandalism, breed new criminals, weigh down financially on the city and represent one of the biggest obstacles for its recovery.

Citywide, the number of people who have left Juárez in the last three years is about 230,000, according to one study.

Urban planning experts believe restoring these areas is a crucial step to get Juárez back on its feet, but while some projects are in the process of taking off, the task remains a largely unsolved challenge.
In some ways, empty housing units are both the cause and consequence behind some of the city's most substantial problems today.

For one, they attract crime. Empty houses are often vandalized or serve as hideouts for thieves and drug addicts; in some cases, hit men have even used them to dump bodies. To avoid the risk, new residents will not move in, triggering a vicious circle of more desolation and crime.

For the city administration, it has meant continuing to shoulder the high cost of maintaining the massive network of utilities that run through these mostly unoccupied areas, at a time when the departure of thousands of taxpaying homeowners and businesspeople has caused the city coffers to settle critically low.

But urban development experts say the problem with housing started years before.

Abigail GarcĂ*a, coordinator of plans and programs at the Municipal Institute of Planning and Research, or IMIP, said residential construction in Juárez soared in the 1990s thanks to federal policies that made low-income housing credits widely available as a measure of economic stimulation.

The boom in residential real estate was also meant to accommodate the growing number of people moving into the city, which had become a magnet for thousands of jobseekers from all around Mexico.

"Juárez received and received and received people from all over the country, and they needed a place to live. But now some people have left and returned to their places of origin, and others don't want to buy a home because of the uncertainty regarding their jobs. And it's all because of the insecurity," said Victor Manuel Ortega, president of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry, or CMIC, in Juárez.

But GarcĂ*a said there was no research supporting the push for more houses, and population growth rates also seemed to contradict the construction trend.

"Given the economic growth of the city, the logic was that their gamble would be successful. But there was no study suggesting that these houses would be occupied," she said.

Figures from Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography, or INEGI, show that while Juárez had one of the highest population growth rates in the country for several decades -- the city grew by 21 percent between 1990 and 1995 -- the pace began to slow down in the early 2000s. In the first five years of the last decade, the population grew only 7 percent.

Ortega said residential construction was justified by the industrial plants that continued to arrive in Juárez and required new homes for their employees.

"It definitely wasn't a miscalculation, because there wasn't a miscalculation from the part of the industrial plants or from the restaurants and from every other business," he said. "These were unoccupied houses meant for the people who came in on an annual basis."

But César Fuentes, regional director of Juárez's Northern Border College, said factors other than need were involved, such as politics and powerful interests in the last 50 years that often trumped technical decisions regarding the planning of the city.

"When the municipal government wanted to expand to the southeast, we argued it was an inefficient move in terms of expanding water and drainage infrastructure, especially when there were plenty of undeveloped areas within the city. However, the decision to grow outward was approved by the city government because of its ties with the owners of that land," he said.

"In the case of Juárez, the powerful groups that control the land keep strong ties to the political parties because they fund their campaigns, so their interests will be protected by whatever administration is in charge."

Fuentes said one problem of this unhinged growth in housing was that residential development did not go hand in hand with the creation of schools, health centers, supermarkets or community centers in those areas, which he sees as one of the causes behind family disintegration, school dropout rates and crime in the city.

"Now we see areas in the west and southeast where there are no high schools, for example. Whether it is because of their economic situation or the distance from education centers, young people have no opportunities. This influences whether they stay in school or not, and can turn them into easy prey for drug traffickers," he said.

The result was a cancerous growth in the number of houses being built in the city, which was only accentuated by the recent exodus of people fleeing from the violence.

According to INEGI figures, there were 70,434 unoccupied dwellings in 2005 -- last year, the number reached 111,103, or about 24 percent of all private homes. A recent study from a social sciences research center in Juárez found that about 40 percent of them had been abandoned.

For the construction sector, the collapse of the housing market meant a near complete shutdown. Ortega said that construction investments in the city have dropped almost 90 percent since the crisis started. Out of the city's almost 400 construction companies, only 30 currently have work, he said.

Urban planning experts in the city believe that repairing abandoned areas and attracting new residents is a crucial step in restoring the city's social fabric.

GarcĂ*a thinks efforts should focus on building health centers, schools and commercial areas in the locations lacking them. Some of the empty houses could be repurposed into community centers, small libraries or rental homes for temporary populations, she said.

State, city and housing officials have already announced or begun several initiatives to fill those homes. The city government announced last month that it will restore and give away 100 homes to outstanding municipal police officers.

Chihuahua's branch of the National Workers Housing Fund Institute, or Infonavit, recently began offering a home-repairing credit to potential home buyers who take an existing damaged home.

And LĂłpez, with the city's urban development department, said that the municipal government has begun a pilot program to rehabilitate Riveras del Bravo, a neighborhood with one of the highest vacancy levels east of the city. LĂłpez said the repairs include fixing street holes, parks and lighting posts, while the federal government will invest in community, sports and education centers.

But observers and the general public believe these efforts haven't been enough.

Claudia, a 27-year-old housewife who lives in Riveras del Bravo and prefers not to give her last name, said she saw city workers clean half a dozen houses, but hasn't seen them since then. The street lights went on briefly during a visit from Juárez Mayor HĂ©ctor "Teto" MurguĂ*a, but the streets have been dark ever since.

Meanwhile, neighbors continue to abandon their houses since the killing of three men last year, their slayings marked by three small crosses on the sidewalk. Claudia said thieves target maquiladora workers in the early morning and banners have appeared on a nearby convenience store warning residents and merchants that they will soon be asked for an extortion fee.

"My 7-year-old son has heard gunshots in the streets and now he doesn't like to go out because he's afraid he'll get shot," she said.

Some believe government officials are lacking coordination to implement neighborhood restoration programs, but besides that, Fuentes said the local government couldn't if it wanted to because of its tight budget.

And given the city's security crisis, a large part of municipal resources currently go to security-oriented programs.

LĂłpez said another problem is the legal status of abandoned houses, as it can take several months for housing authorities to repossess them. So far, Infonavit has recovered 2,500 and estimates it will have 15,000 by the end of the year, LĂłpez said.

Ultimately, Fuentes said, it all comes back to reversing the city's security crisis. Without security, people will not migrate to Juárez looking for work as they once did, houses will remain unoccupied and that will continue to fan the flames of violence and other crime, he said.

"If we don't see any improvements in security, it is difficult to move forward," he said. "We can think of many things (to solve the empty housing problem), but I don't see how it could be done. If we don't have security, who's going to want to come to Juárez?"

Alejandro MartĂ*nez-Cabrera may be reached at a.martinez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6129.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18118887