Residential movement among the poor: the constraints on housing choice in Latin

The paper examines the validity of current theories of intra-city migration, subjecting those theories to the test of explaining new data collected in a total of 13 low-income settlements in three Latin American cities: Bogotai, Mexico City, and Valencia, Venezuela. The study focuses attention upon the principal reception points for migrants; the location of previous place of residence for contemporary barrio dwellers; the tenure and dwelling characteristics of previous places of residence. The authors conclude that residential patterns in Latin American cities are less the outcome of migrant choice, as some theories argue, and more the product of constraints imposed upon the land and housing markets. Both markets are in turn conditioned by the socio-political structure of the city in question. Particularly critical to the residential patterns are: (1) land ownership and the ease with which low- income households are able to secure house plots either by purchase or by squatting; (2) state intervention which directly and indirectly affects opportunities for renting and sharing accommodation; (3) the physical extension and organization of the city which, combined with the quality and cost of its transportation system, constrains the search for accommodation and increasingly encourages people to look for housing and work in the same zone of the city. Understanding these constraints is especially important in formulating an appropriate governmental response to the housing situation in Latin American cities.