Housing microfinance, saving and credit cooperatives, and community development in low-income settings in Mexico

Housing microfinance schemes for self-organized housing have been incorporated into Mexican housing policies since 2007. This is the result of World Bank loans to Mexico but also of housing activists who for decades have advocated for the development of financial instruments to support the ‘social production of housing’—a concept defined by them as a type of housing production geared to meet families’ shelter needs rather than to enhance capital accumulation. While these World Bank housing loans were mainly oriented to strengthen the housing finance sector, the housing activists pushed for the inclusion of saving and credit cooperatives as housing microfinance providers. These cooperatives seek to promote at the local level, alternative development projects built on solidarity economy principles. Taking inspiration from critical literature on the co-optation of progressive actors by international financial institutions we highlight the activists’ agency and examine their role at the community level. We argue that processes of co-optation pushed by international financial institutions can always be contested and negotiated at a local level. We propose that, in this case, the engagement of progressive actors such as saving and credit cooperatives working according to principles of the solidarity economy could open political opportunities to subvert financial rationalities inscribed in the housing finance schemes of the World Bank.