MEXICO CITY — Karina Franco’s ornate Art Deco building in the historic center of Mexico City has long been the heart of a inner-city lifestyle, housing families of artists and activists, and supporting an ecosystem of street vendors.
But as the pandemic rocked office standards, a wave of remote workers from around the world descended on Mexico City, the nation’s capital. The flow of foreigners has yet to slow, driving up housing costs, displacing residents and upending the fabric of neighborhoods.
In August, Ms. Franco and the other tenants in her building were told by their landlord that their leases would not be renewed. Some units soon appeared on Airbnb – at rates more than four times the monthly rent – and new neighbors, mostly English speaking, are now filling the halls.
“It was very shocking at first,” said Ms Franco, 47, a migrant rights worker who found a new apartment in another part of the city. “Then I felt angry.”
Since the pandemic, Mexico City has become a leading global hub for foreigners who are not bound to their offices by work-from-home policies and are drawn to the kind of comforts a dollar or euro salary can afford.
Between January and October, more than 9,500 permits were issued to Americans allowing them temporary residence in Mexico City, according to federal immigration statistics, nearly double the 5,400 issued during the same period in 2019. Many more came in on tourist visas, which allow them to work from Mexico for up to six months as long as they are paid abroad.
The influx has been a boon to entrepreneurs in areas popular with foreigners and landlords who are benefiting from record demand for long-term stays on platforms like Airbnb. It has also helped Mexicans with spare rooms earn extra income amid skyrocketing inflation.
But the surge has rattled an already tight housing market and threatens to make large parts of the city, where the median monthly salary is $220, unaffordable for many locals.
Mexico City’s left-wing mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has been trying to navigate the changing market by embracing the transplants and partnering with Airbnb on a campaign promoting the city as a “creative tourism capital” that encourages foreigners to spend money spend in less affluent neighborhoods .
But while the surge in US and European visitors is fueling Airbnb’s rapid expansion, the mayor’s alliance with the rental giant has fueled an argument that has enveloped the platform in other major cities, from London to New York to San Francisco, where critics have accused it of driving up housing costs.
Housing activists, wary of gentrification and a shortage of rental housing in the sprawling capital, have accused city leaders of fomenting a modern “colonization” that many Mexicans praise.
Sergio González, a housing activist, said there would be a “big problem” if the city government did not regulate the housing market at a time when remote workers lead to the “forced displacement of families”.
Amid the backlash, the mayor has acknowledged that US and European telecommuters may be putting pressure on housing prices and has instructed the city’s housing authority to study the effect of Airbnb.
“The digital nomads are coming,” Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters in November. “Of course we don’t want this to lead to gentrification or price increases.”
According to Airbnb, between April and June this year, the number of stays booked on the platform in Mexico City for longer than a month increased by 30 percent compared to the same period in 2019, making the city one of the most popular destinations worldwide among long-term tenants.
In the neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma, whose lavish streetscapes and dynamic dining scenes have long made them appealing to wealthier residents, co-working spaces with free coffee and cubicles are on the rise.
English speakers pour out of the cafes and on Sundays the cantinas are full of young people in sports jerseys, the televisions switched from football to American football.
The city’s campaign with Airbnb, which is expected to roll out fully on the platform’s website early next year, aims to spread crowds. It will promote guided activities, designed with the help of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, in neighborhoods that don’t typically receive many visitors, the company and city officials said. Airbnb will also provide information about moving to Mexico, including visa requirements.
Miroslava Miyarath Lazcano Cruz, who has been offering tours through Airbnb since 2019, started a new tour on Airbnb in October through Xochimilco, the working-class neighborhood where she lives, which serves as a model for the program.
The tour includes preparing tamales from handpicked ingredients and floating along the neighborhood’s famous network of ancient canals.
The experience has generated high demand and has introduced tourists to the markets and customs of a part of the capital not as much explored by outsiders. Ms. Lazcano Cruz said that the visitors who have come through Airbnb have “a vision and a thirst to get to know the space in a different way”.
Suvi Haering, a Finnish creative director who arrived in Mexico City in November after working remotely in France for two months, said that working and living in Mexico “pushes you to challenge your own thinking.”
“It’s the opposite of where I’m from, so it’s the most inspiring place I can go,” said Ms. Haering as she ate at a restaurant in the Roma neighborhood with a friend, a project manager from Denmark, who was staying with her at a nearby Airbnb.
The increase in the number of foreigners living in Mexico City coincided with an increase in rents. Citywide average monthly rents increased from $880 in January 2020 to $1,080 in November, according to data from Propiedades.com, a real estate website.
The increase is higher in more upscale neighborhoods. In an area of Condesa that borders Chapultepec Park, one of the city’s larger green spaces, monthly rents rose from $1,610 in January 2020 to $2,250 in November, mainly due to the arrival of remote workers, said Leonardo González, a analyst at Propiedades.com.
Many are finding homes on Airbnb in the short term, putting pressure on the available supply of long-term rentals, according to housing experts.
Cities around the world, including Barcelona, London and New York, where housing costs have risen sharply, have targeted Airbnb by imposing stricter rules on short-term rentals.
In Mexico, an Airbnb spokesperson said the company was working with government officials “to be part of the solution to the challenges facing communities in Mexico City.”
The company also highlighted the financial benefits for people renting out rooms on the platform: More than half of Airbnb hosts recently surveyed by the company in Mexico City said the additional revenue helped offset a rise in rents. cover food costs due to inflation.
For Leonor González, the income from an Airbnb she began renting in 2020 in a state bordering Mexico City enabled her to continue paying her employees during the pandemic, as her business came to a standstill in setting up convention spaces.
Later that year, she also listed a new apartment, a stylish loft in Mexico City, for $71 a night on Airbnb. It’s booked almost nonstop, Ms. González said, mostly by Americans who work remotely for more than a week.
“The truth is that there are no locals renting now,” she said of her Condesa neighborhood. “They’re just foreigners.”
Mexico City officials say the high housing costs in parts of the capital are a result of years of gentrification that began in the 1980s, when a wave of new construction following a devastating earthquake brought in younger residents with bigger wallets.
Still, Diana Alarcón, a top adviser to the mayor, acknowledged that remote workers also contribute to rising house prices.
“The fact that a large number of higher-income people arrive in one area can certainly lead to price increases,” she said. “That is precisely why it is important to show visitors that there are many more areas to discover in Mexico.”
Ximena Gómez Gutiérrez, a 24-year-old who commutes an hour from her family home in a neighboring state to her job at a reproductive rights organization in Mexico City, recently took part in a protest against the new Airbnb program and the lack of affordable housing .
Living close to her work and being able to enjoy a vibrant urban lifestyle has long been a dream, Ms Gutiérrez said.
“But my salary is not enough to even think about living” in the capital, she said.
