The High Cost of Cheap Rentals in Mexico City

ALEXANDRA DUNNET: Every single apartment is an Airbnb now, so you can’t live anywhere.
TARIRO MZEZEWA, HOST: Alexandra Dunnet was born and raised in Mexico City. In 2017, she found her dream home: a two-bedroom apartment in the Condesa neighborhood. It ran her 9,000 pesos a month — about 500 U.S. dollars. She was part of a thriving community. Some of her neighbors had lived there for decades. They would meet up at locally owned taquerias and coffee shops.

[SOUND OF CHATTER IN A RESTAURANT]

[MUSIC]

AD: Those places were filled with stories, like my first date, the first time I had a fight with my best friend. Those were the spots, because that was the life.

TM: But in 2021, her landlord told everyone in the building that their leases wouldn’t be renewed. One by one, each tenant was forced to leave. The apartments were remodeled, and soon, they were occupied not by Mexico City residents — but by Americans and other foreigners.

AD: They turn it into this, like, pretentious Mexican, but not really, boutique Airbnb hotel for, like, digital nomads. And it was very depressing because, like, you would see them going in, and they would just, like, like they wouldn’t even say hello.

TM: These new tenants also drove the rent way up.

AD: And it was shocking because it was, like, about $5,000 a month, while I was paying $500. And like, the same flat, the exact same flat than mine.

TM: It wasn’t just Alexandra’s building. This rapid turnover was spreading — especially in popular neighborhoods at the center of the city, like Roma and Condesa.

The apparent culprit? Foreigners who could afford to work remotely. They’d stay for six months or a year at a time, bringing their high salaries to a city with cheaper rent and fewer rights for tenants. They came in and — whether they meant to or not — displaced people.

AD: And now because of like, some [bleep] bunch of gringos want to come here, like, give yourself the experience to live in Mexico City, it’s like now you’re ruining lives in a way, like you’re destroying lives.

[THEME MUSIC]

TM: From WHYY, this is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa. In this episode we’re exploring one of the most beautiful cities on Earth. Nestled in the Sierra Madre mountains, with balmy weather year-round and bustling streets filled with song, Mexico City is the oldest and most populous city in North America. But it’s currently in a housing crisis, fueled by travel.

That’s coming up, after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

TM: Welcome back to Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

EMILIANO RUPRAH, PRODUCER: Often people who visit Mexico speak of a country that’s kind of imbued with a sense of magic realism, where nothing is what it seems. And it’s true. It has that aspect where you could walk into a street and find yourself in an incredible garden, or visit the home of a famous painter.

TM: Our producer Emiliano Ruprah grew up here. He treasures what the city once was.

ER: One of my earliest memories is walking along the street with my mom, and passing by all these, like, little mom-and-pop shops.

[SOUNDS OF STREET VENDORS CALLING OUT TO CUSTOMERS]

ER: There was the carpenter. There was the shoe shiner. There was the tortilla stand, and you could smell, like, the sweet, smoky corn being processed into tortillas. I remember a lot of street salesmen selling candy that smelled like mango or tamarind, always covered with, like, a dust of chili and lime powder. And then the other element is the sounds.

[SOUNDS OF ORGANILLEROS PLAYING MUSIC]

Like, the organilleros who have these organs, which they churn and make this really kind of sad music, or the flutesman, or the lone saxophonists, or the mariachis, you know, wailing out as they walk down the street.

[SOUND OF SAXOPHONE BLARING]

TM: But thanks to social media, the rest of the world got wind of what a well-kept secret the city was. Corporations bought in, airlines added routes there and, naturally, tourists came. To Emiliano, it felt like the city was changing rapidly. But the new visitors didn’t know the difference.

RACHEL LANGLEY: I’m Rachel Langley. I’m from Austin, Texas, originally, and I live in Mexico City. I’ve been there since 2018.

TM: Rachel started out as one of these visitors. She first came on a six-month tourist visa, and never left.

RA: What has kept me in Mexico for as long as I’ve been here is just this sense of, like, trust here that I don’t, I never experienced in the U.S.

TM: At first, she didn’t realize the impact her presence could have on her neighbors.

RA: At that time, I didn’t see it as a place that was being necessarily gentrified, and that was, like, a little bit of my own ignorance to what was going on in the city at that time.

TM: What began as a trickle turned to a flood. Instead of regulating the wave of foreigners, the government dove in head first.

[SOUND OF MAYOR SPEAKING IN SPANISH AT PRESS CONFERENCE]

CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM PARDO: Ayer se presentó aquí en la Ciudad de México, una alianza entre el gobierno de la Ciudad de México, Airbnb, y UNESCO, para promover a la Ciudad de México como capital del turismo creativo…

TM: In 2022, Mexico City’s mayor, now president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, signed a deal making the city an official partner of Airbnb, whose goal was to “promote the city as a global hub for remote workers.”

On some level, the deal made sense. The pandemic hit city governments across the world hard, and local officials expected the partnership would bring Mexico City an influx of $1.4 billion. Sheinbaum Pardo promised that the new money would trickle down to residents. News of the deal immediately went viral, worldwide.

[MONTAGE OF YOUTUBE VIDEOS]

YOUTUBER 1: Hola, bienvenidos. Welcome to beautiful Mexico City.

YOUTUBER 2: Today I’m in Mexico, my favorite country for booking Airbnbs.

YOUTUBER 3: Here in Mexico City, a city where many Americans have been migrating to.

YOUTUBER 4: This apartment is twice the size of the one I had in Houston, for about half the price.

YOUTUBER 5: The labor is where things are a lot cheaper here.

[MUSIC]

TM: Emiliano has seen the effects firsthand in his neighborhood.

ER: Think of the difference of a city where, for years, the tenant and the homeowner knew each other. When a corporation takes over buildings and apartments, and kind of rules from the outside, that dynamic completely changes.

TM: Alexandra also felt the shift — in big ways, like losing the apartment she loved…
AD: I was so scared. It’s like, where am I going to live? Like, if everything is this expensive, what am I going to do?

TM: And in her everyday life, like when she goes to restaurants.

AD: I went to this one the other day and they gave me a menu in English, and I was like, “Are you serious? As I am in Mexico, I would like to read the menu in my own language. Thank you very much.”

TM: Eventually, Alexandra moved in with a friend. But she misses her old neighbors.

AD: It’s, like, a thing that I don’t allow myself to think about very much, because I find it very painful. You know, it’s not just like you lose a flat. You lose a life.

TM: We reached out to Airbnb and the Mexico City government for comment. Neither of them got back to us. The government has instituted some minor regulations on short-term rentals. Still, what happened to Alexandra’s building is now common in Mexico City. In the last two decades, the number of short-term rentals has more than tripled — from about 22,000 units to nearly 72,000.

At the same time, more than 20,000 low-income families are forced to leave the city every year because there isn’t enough affordable housing. Sometimes, the stakes are life and death.

ESTI ROMERO: My name is Esti Romero.

TM: Esti grew up between Dallas, Texas and Mexico City — where she says she was…

ER: …always at my grandmother’s house. She lived there my entire life, up until the very end. My whole family has lived in that neighborhood for, like, over 50 years.

TM: Like many grandmothers, Esti’s abuela had a lot of influence in her community.

[MUSIC]

ER: Her name was Livia Romero García, and this woman always had her lipstick on, always had her nails done. She was very famous for the amount of blush that she would put on every day. They called her La Chapis, which is just a way to say blush in Spanish.

TM: She wasn’t just known for her looks. Esti’s grandmother was genuine and giving.

ER: No one ever went hungry around her, or if anybody needed a night to stay at her house, she was always that person.

TM: Her home was a gathering place for Esti’s family for generations.

ER: My family would throw a party for, like, the opening of an envelope. We always wanted to be together.

TM: Then, the city started to change before Esti’s eyes.

ER: I started noticing there’s a lot more people who were international coming to Mexico City. And I was like, “OK, you know, this happens all the time. But they go back.”

TM: The tourists seemed to be staying much longer. And soon, their presence would affect her family directly.

ER: My grandmother never owned her home. The landlord that she had for most of her life passed away, and left the property to his daughter. She almost wanted to start over with the building.

TM: The new landlord raised the rent multiple times.

ER: And it came to a point where she just literally asked my grandmother for the house. She said she had all these plans for it, to make it a short-term rental. And that day was a very, very dark day. You know, we got the call, and I thought someone had died, because we knew what it meant.

TM: It meant that the life Esti and her family shared would be permanently upended.

ER: She was, you know, an older woman. She had advancing dementia, and she moved into a, basically, a studio. Tiny. Really, really tiny. And that was really, like, the beginning of the end for my grandmother. As soon as she moved, her dementia just got… It happened so quickly. And she had a cardiac event and passed away.

[MUSIC]

It was so sad, because we all grew up there, like, we all grew up at my grandmother’s house. And she had lived there for so long.

TM: Next on Peak Travel, we’ll hear about the policies that are forcing displacement in Mexico City.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

TM: This is Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa.
CARLA ESCOFFIÉ: We were really mad, because the Mexican government, they are doing an agreement without even knowing how this is going to affect people in Mexico City.

TM: Carla Escoffié is a housing advocate for tenants across Mexico.

CE: And I deal mostly with cases that involve the right of housing.

TM: When the city announced it was partnering with Airbnb, Carla was shocked.

[MUSIC]

CE: Obviously, my reaction, I think most of the people, and mostly from Mexico City, was frustration.

TM: To Carla, the city was neglecting its citizens for profit.

CE: The problem is that the government of Mexico City, it’s not that they just haven’t regulated Airbnb, but they are promoting Airbnb. So the situation is, like, really, it’s really sad.

TM: But then, people started to push back.

[SOUNDS OF PROTESTORS CHANTING]

CE: There was a protest in Mexico, a march in Mexico City for the right of housing. It was the first time that this new generation, the young generation, take the streets to protest because of the right of housing.

TM: Rosalba González Loyde studies urban sociology and the emergence of Airbnb in Mexico City. She agrees with Carla, and says that activists and residents are fighting two connected battles: one against Airbnb, and another for housing rights and protections for tenants.

ROSALBA GONZÁLEZ LOYDE [TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH]: So when a foreigner arrives and says, “I’ll pay you in dollars,” and he’s white, and has blue eyes, and speaks English, well, it’s easier to rent to that person than to give it to someone from the city, right?

TM: She doesn’t think digital nomads are to blame. The real problem is the system, which lures visitors and prioritizes them by making it easy to settle without regulation.

[MUSIC]

RGL: I always say that the issue with foreigners is that we can put a face to them. They have a face that we can point our finger to, and be like, “Oh, the problem is with him,” rather than understanding how the system works, how the public policies have functioned, how the financial system works at a global level, even how technology works. And those things don’t have a face, so we fight more with what we can actually point to.

TM: Rosalba and Carla say tenant rights in Mexico have been neglected for far too long. There’s no public housing system, and no fair housing authority like in the U.S. That makes it easy for landlords to dissolve leases, evict locals at a moment’s notice — and replace them with higher-earning foreigners who can pay more in rent.

RGL: We don’t know who rents in Mexico City. Like, who are the landlords? How many houses do they have? How many apartments? The issue of paying income taxes on real estate for housing in Mexico City, it’s a gray area. I mean, we don’t have any information.

[MUSIC]

TM: Other cities have taken a tougher stance when it comes to regulating Airbnb. Montreal banned them in some neighborhoods entirely to preserve housing for residents. New York City requires Airbnb owners to register their properties with the city, and prove that they live in the units with their guests. If they don’t, they can be fined thousands of dollars.

Carla says Mexico City’s not just losing residents to the Airbnb boom. The city is also losing what makes it special. Many locals say they feel like their home is being taken over by tourists.

CE: I think when people say colonization, it’s because they’re feeling that something is getting lost that they are not going to get back. A lot of people in social media are saying that they are scared because right now the salsa in the restaurants and in the taquerias, it’s not spicy anymore. They are feeling like foreign people in their own city.

TM: Rachel, who moved to Mexico City in 2018, has become more and more conscious of the dynamic she’s involved in, especially after living in a rapidly gentrifying part of town.

RL: I didn’t really love taking up space there, you know? I was like, “I’m just one other white woman taking up an apartment in this neighborhood.”

TM: She’s trying to do it better. Rachel has become fluent in Spanish. She’s working toward her citizenship, and has a Mexican ID. She wants to invest back into the country she’s been living in. Housing advocates say that this self-awareness is a good start.

RGL: I think it would be worth it if when the migratory process occurs, people recognize the process they’re participating in, and how they’re inserting themselves in the city where they are doing it.

CE: If you’re going to move some place, you have also to make an effort to understand that sad part, because any city, any place, has problems, has social and political problems.

[MUSIC]

TM: But ultimately, it’s up to elected officials to clean up the mess.

AD: It’s like, “Oh wow, how exciting that you get to work and also live in Rome for three months!” That sounds like a dream, obviously. I mean, I don’t blame them. I would be in the same position, but I think it’s our government’s responsibility to make sure that the people that live in Mexico are taken care of and their rights are being protected.

TM: Esti still lives in Dallas, but she thinks of her grandmother and her Mexico City home often. She hopes her fellow Americans consider the downstream effects of moving abroad.

ER: I just want the idea to be out there of, whoever hears this. and you’re thinking of moving to a place like Mexico City, or Hawaii, or these places that have such a long history of fighting to just be there. What are you adding to that place by moving there? Who are you displacing? And confront that. Look at it in the eye. Because it’s devastating.

[THEME MUSIC]
TM: Next time, on Peak Travel…
OSCAR UBIDE: It’s like the football stadium of Barcelona full every day here in the market.

TM: La Boqueria is the most famous fresh food market in Barcelona. But the balance of customers inside is tipping from locals to tourists.

XAVI PETRAS [TRANSLATED FROM CATALAN]: I have all the tourists touching everything, taking pictures, blocking my stall. Sometimes a local comes to buy, and the stall is blocked by tourists taking pictures.

TM: What does this mean for the future of the market, and the city as a whole?

MATT GOULDING: Barcelona has become a bit of an amusement park, and if you’re a local, you know, you’re sort of a character.

TM: That’s next time, on Peak Travel.
This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Our executive producer is Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa. We had production help on this episode from Emiliano Ruprah.

Our editor is Meg Driscoll. Original music, mixing and sound design by Catherine Anderson. Engineering by Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers. Our tile art was created by Nick Rogacki.

Special thanks to Diana Holguín, the voice actor who helped bring this episode to life.
Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive Producer: Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Additional Production: Emiliano Ruprah
Editor: Meg Driscoll
Original Music, Mixing, and Sound Design: Catherine Anderson
Engineers: Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers
Tile Art: Nick Rogacki

Special thanks to Diana Holguín, the voice actor who helped bring this episode to life.
Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.