Fighting corruption by promoting homeownership

MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — Mexican police are testing a new weapon against widespread corruption in their ranks: homeownership.

Officers and prison guards in Michoacan state can now get special deals on houses and financing through a pilot program designed to keep them out of the pockets of organized crime. The strategy is part of Mexico’s desperate push to professionalize local law enforcement, infamous for extorting bribes at bogus traffic stops and providing security for drug lords.

Through a partnership between a private home builder and the state, more than 4,000 police and prison guards who normally wouldn’t qualify are eligible for mortgages on brand new homes under construction outside Morelia, the state capital. The state provides the land and gets refunded from the mortgage payments. The homeowners must pass background checks and forfeit the property if convicted of a crime.

The program fulfills a dream deferred for some police officers.

“It’s the first time they’ve given us the opportunity and that anyone has cared about us,” said Fabian Arreola, 33, a Michoacan highway patrolman and army veteran who grew up on a small ranch with a dirt floor. He supports a wife and three boys on about $9,600 a year.

“This is a dream for all of us who never had our own home,” said Michoacan SWAT team officer Luis Alberto Cruz, a mortgage applicant who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with seven siblings. He relies on hazard pay to make ends meet.

The program so far is exclusive to Michoacan, but the homebuilder, Real Estate for the Promotion of Housing with Dignity, is courting other Mexican states that cannot afford to build police housing. As it pours the first foundations on land provided by the state, the company says it could eventually crack an untapped mortgage market for 750,000 state and local police across Mexico.

It’s a market with inherent risks. Most Mexican police officers earn less than $10,000 a year. And they are considered bigger credit risks than even street vendors or handicraft makers because of the chances of corruption or that they will get killed, said Jesus Perez, president of the development company, also known as INPROVIDI.