Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Crime Empties Houses
This stat may not be any more reliable than yesterday's note about housing values decreasing by 80 percent because of the violence, but it doesn't seem as implausible: the PGR says that 300,000 houses in Mexico have been vacated because of "extortion, kidnapping, and because criminal groups have demanded from their owners possession of their property so that they function as safe houses." If that's anywhere near the mark, that's significant displacement as a result of crime, and it doesn't even account for people who left because of indirect threats.
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Numerous sources in Ciudad Juarez confirmed to me last year that in that city alone, approximately 25% of all houses have been abandoned in three years. And seeing as how quite a few villages and small towns have been partially or completely abandoned in some northern regions, the figure isn't surprising at all.
Yeah 300,000 moving out of town doesn't strike me as high, though the idea that they were all because of direct threats against them like they are talking about in the article --ie move so I can have your house or Ill kill you-- I'm not quite sure of.
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