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By Jonathan Clark PART THREE IN A THREE-PART SERIES: This story was originally published in the Mexico edition of The Miami Herald on March 31, 2005. Alberto "Beto" Lopez, a 30-year-old visual artist, recently relocated from Mexico City's Condesa neighborhood to a refurbished apartment in the Historic Center. And as a result, he's been taking some good-natured ribbing from his co-workers. "They tease me by saying, 'Oh, when the Condesa was trendy, that's where you lived. But now it's cool to live in the center, and so you moved there,'" he said. Lopez is part of a new wave of people moving to the Historic Center, a once-neglected neighborhood that has experienced a rebirth as municipal, federal and private sector investment has poured into the area. As those funds reach the housing market, refurbished living spaces are becoming available for newcomers as well as for some holdovers. But as the neighborhood becomes more upscale, other long-time residents feel that they are being pushed aside in the name of renewal. The building that Lopez moved into was renovated by the Historic Center Foundation, an organization run by multi-billionaire Carlos Slim, one of the key figures in the center's rebirth. The building, like many of Slim's new properties, is "theme" housing: involvement in the arts community is a prerequisite for living there. "We have a lot of younger tenants who are rediscovering the center," said Adrian Pandal, director of the Historic Center Foundation, "and so we've created affordable apartments for artists, for students, and for intellectuals, as well as some luxury apartments." Lopez likes the way the artistic theme of his building has brought together tenants who share a similar attitude. "You can listen to your music at night when you're working and nobody complains," he said. And while it doesn't make him happy that he pays his rent each month to Latin America's richest man, he hasn't been losing sleep over it, either. "We're paying rich people in almost everything we do nowadays," he said. "You buy a Coke or anything, really, and you're supporting the rich." PUSHED ASIDE Many of the buildings that Slim and other investors are renovating had been neglected by previous owners or severely damaged by the 1985 earthquake. But in many cases, even the center's most dilapidated structures had remained inhabited. Luz Maria Beltran heads a group of tenants contesting the sale of their apartment building at the corner of Donceles and 57th streets to the Historic Center Foundation. She says that when the previous owner decided to sell the building to Slim in 2002, the occupants were asked to sign a letter relinquishing their rights under a law that restricts the private sale of occupied buildings. The tenants refused to sign the letter, she says, but the sale went through anyway. Now the residents live in the building under duress as they try to mount a legal challenge to the sale. "They are buying and selling these buildings in the center like they were quesadillas or something - they aren't giving the slightest thought to the people who live in them," Beltran said. "But just because we are poor, it doesn't mean we're stupid, and it doesn't mean that we don't have needs. We have rights, too, and we are going to stand up for those rights." If the sale of her building is allowed to stand, Beltran says, the 24 families currently living there - some of whom have spent as many as 30 years there - will face unpleasant alternatives. "Once we get evicted, we'll be out on the streets. Or maybe we'll have to look for a place to live in the more dangerous areas (outside the center's area of renovation)," she said. A third option is to apply for subsidized housing through the government housing authority, but Beltran says that the waiting lists for such housing are long, "and even if you get a house, you might as well be living on another planet, those developments are so far out of the city." Slim's foundation says it has offered the current occupants low-rent apartments in other buildings it owns. But the tenants say they do not want to rent from Slim. "Who's to say that he won't just kick us out of the new place after a year?" Beltran said. Beltran sees an insidious side effect of the Historic Center renovation project that has more to do with demographics than urban renewal. "They are trying to change the image of the center, and they want the people who live here to project that image," she said. "So what they are doing is saying, 'You, poor people, we want you out,' and 'You, Indians, go someplace else.' They are trying to change the race of the center." Part of the basis of the legal challenge by Beltran's group is that the tenants were not allowed to bid on their building when it went up for sale, though, as Beltran admits, they are contesting that aspect of the sale on principle only. "They sold the building to Slim for 668,000 (U.S.) dollars," she said. "How in the world could we ever get that kind of money?" What she really wants, she says as she points out the dozens of cracks in her decaying apartment's walls, is for the city to take possession of the building and renovate it for the tenants who are already living there. Three blocks away, at 44 Belisario Dominguez Street, that is exactly what is happening. RESCUING AT-RISK HOUSING "This building was in very bad shape," says Ruth Alvarez, squeezing past a team of workers mixing a fresh tub of cement in the courtyard of a building known as La Covadonga. "The walls were sagging and crumbling, it was filthy, and there were five or six people in a family living in each one of the tiny apartments." Alvarez is the coordinating architect of a city-sponsored effort to renovate the 18th-century structure on Belisario Dominguez into modern, low-income housing. La Covadonga was originally built as a school, and supposedly takes its name from the first headmaster. It later became a foster home for Spanish girls, and then, by the 20th century, had become transformed into a vecindad, or tenement house, with dozens of one-room apartments opening onto its interior courtyard. In early 2004, acting under a new program called "Altoriesgo Structural," or Structures at High Risk, the city housing authority condemned the building, which at that time was home to 37 families. After purchasing the edifice from its owner, the housing authority relocated the occupants into temporary, rent-free housing. When the restoration effort is finished in another two months or so, those same families will return to live again in La Covadonga. "This program is based on two principles," said Anabel Monterubio, spokeswoman for the housing authority. "First, there are the social questions involved, like how to provide for poor families who live in unsafe conditions. But it also has to do with urban development, with strengthening neighborhoods and creating a sense of community pride in the area." Rather than simply moving people from dilapidated buildings to make way for new housing and new residents, the city is renovating housing in the neighborhood for the people who have already been living there. Under the Altoriesgo Structural program, once a condemned building is restored, participating families return to their previous dwellings as owners rather than tenants. They receive 15- or 30-year interest-free mortgages from the city, which they pay off monthly at a rate of between 15 and 20 percent of the household income. The city believes that giving residents ownership of the spaces they live in will not only guarantee better upkeep of living spaces, it will also make people more invested in the well-being of their buildings and neighborhoods. "These people have family ties in their neighborhoods, and they already have services they count on there and a cultural life that they are connected to," Monterubio said. "Why not just move them out to another place? Because they have existing rights to live in their homes and their neighborhoods." As the restoration of the Historic Center progresses, the issue of existing rights is one that the city, federal and private sector interests will have to continue to consider. "There's a space for everyone here - we all fit in the Historic Center," said Ana Lilia Cepeda, director of the city's Historic Center Commission. |