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L.M. faces imminent eviction after her landlord in Mexico City’s Tacubaya neighborhood refused to renew the lease on a townhouse she shares with roommates. The building’s ownership is converting spacious units into multiple short-term rentals, pushing long-term tenants out.
L.M. moved from Puebla to Mexico City and joined a household where one roommate had held the rental contract for 16 years. In December, the landlord informed them the year-to-year lease would not be renewed. Despite paying rent, L.M. and her roommates now live with the constant fear of being forced out.
“It’s difficult and obviously it is a risk to keep going in this situation,” L.M. said. “There is no protection.”
She agreed to be identified only by her initials due to fears of being blacklisted by landlords, who often reject tenants linked to activism on eviction and gentrification issues.
L.M.’s situation highlights growing gentrification pressures in Mexico City, where landlords increasingly convert long-term rentals into short-term units. This trend accelerated during the pandemic as digital nomads arrived and has intensified as the FIFA World Cup approaches in June. Mexico is co-hosting the tournament with Canada and the U.S.
Maria Silvia Emanuelli of the International Habitat Coalition said there is no hard data yet on the World Cup’s impact on rents or evictions. Still, her organization receives frequent complaints from tenants evicted so landlords can capitalize on short-term rental demand from tourists.
“Owners are even ending year-long contracts before they expire because they prefer to offer this home during the World Cup to tourists who will pay much more,” Emanuelli explained.
“These are what we call indirect evictions—those not court-ordered but invisible.”
The coalition’s data shows that in Mexico City, three rental units are converted into short-term rentals every 48 hours. In Cuauhtémoc, the district with nearly half of the city’s 27,000 AirBnB units, there were 82 forced evictions between 2015 and 2025. The neighborhoods of Condesa, Roma, and Juarez make up about 46 percent of the short-term rental market.
In Tacubaya, where L.M. lives, rental units are being marketed as part of “Condesa South,” though this is a separate district entirely. Adriana Enriquez, a public policy and urban development consultant, said the housing crisis in Mexico City is driven not only by tourists and digital nomads but also by internal migration and unchecked city development.
As rents rise in central neighborhoods, many are pushed to the outskirts, where public transit is often unreliable. “We are expelling the poor,” Enriquez said. “We are not improving conditions, we are transforming Mexico City and only allowing those who can pay to stay.”
L.M. and neighbors in her 67-unit building have begun resisting after seven families were forced out and 15 units went under renovation in recent months. They filed a complaint after city inspectors found renovations underway without permits.
A neighbor said the building’s owner, the non-profit Mier and Pesado Foundation, has been using noisy nighttime construction and unexpected rent hikes to force tenants out. “This is what we call silent evictions,” the neighbor said. “They’ve been slowly making life unbearable so residents eventually leave.”
The neighbor, who declined to be named, said tenants are united by their vulnerability. “We are all in the same boat,” he said, “so I am joining the cause no matter what happens to me specifically.”
The Mier and Pesado Foundation declined to comment.
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada said more than two million people rent housing in the city and rental prices rose 30 percent between 2019 and 2023. She noted that about 500,000 residents faced eviction in 2020 alone.
Brugada introduced a new law in April to expand social housing, enforce rent caps, and create an Office for the Defence of Tenants’ Rights for mediation and compliance oversight. The city has also passed laws limiting rent increases to inflation rates and capping short-term rentals to 180 days per year.
But Enriquez said the laws are largely ignored. “You have to move forward at the very least with the law, with what is already in the law,” she said. “If nothing happens, then turn up the pressure.”