This article is part of the Under the Lens series
Dual Crises: Housing in a Changing Climate
Editor’s note: Interviews have been translated from Spanish.
More than 10 years ago, in Quito, Ecuador, 44 residents were chosen to participate in a climate relocation initiative. They still have not received the $12,000 in subsidies from Ecuador’s federal housing agency necessary to pay off their mortgages. Without these subsidies, they are not formal owners of their homes and are susceptible to displacement.
“My house flooded, completely collapsed,” says Catherine Taco, who moved from the neighborhood Nueva Aurora. When the municipal government chose her family for relocation to the social housing development La Mena 2, “the offer was that we would pay a portion and the government would cover the rest,” she says.
I met the affected residents in La Mena 2 for the first time in February 2024, during my time as a Fulbright researcher. Their story is a cautionary tale about how climate adaptation can turn into displacement or neglect by the state. But they want to tell their story to the public, as part of their push to counter a decade of injustice.
An Ambitious Beginning
Many view climate justice as an international issue, driven by unequal emissions across social classes and hemispheres. But inequality can also be perpetuated in ambitious, climate-minded programs.
Because of Quito’s location in the Andes mountains, landslides, erosion, and flooding are constant threats. Homes are often self-constructed by residents on or near ravines and hillsides, which erode over time—especially during heavy rainfall. Given how climate change is expected to intensify extreme precipitation risks globally, Quito’s informal neighborhoods will likely only become more vulnerable with global warming.
Between April and May of 2010, the office of Mayor Augusto Barrera wrote and approved the “Emergency Relocation Plan for Families in High Risk.” The original plan identified 164 families that were living in high-risk homes and would have to relocate. The “Secretaría General de Seguridad y Gobernabilidad” was primarily responsible for identifying and qualifying eligible families, while Quito’s public housing authority (the “Empresa Pública Metropolitana de Hábitat y Vivienda,” or EPMHV) was to deliver them permanent homes.
In Spring 2011, during Quito’s rainy season, the city experienced heavy rainfall and landslides. Most notably, there were two landslides in a matter of days in the neighborhood La Forestal Alta, an informal settlement built up without permits. Residents had installed their own sewage system without municipal support, likely increasing landslide risk due to soil erosion from runoff. Five people died when material from the mountain slopes collapsed onto Avenida Simón Bolívar, a major highway.
Mayor Barrera visited the neighborhood in the aftermath. According to Luis Achig, a former resident of La Forestal Alta who is now awaiting his subsidy in La Mena 2, the municipality’s initial response was to relocate a smaller number of households.
“A woman said to the mayor, ‘If you’re sending one, send us all.’ The mayor responded, ‘Fine, you all go,’” Achig says. Residents were given three days to collect their belongings. They took what they could, but the rest was lost. “On the third day, they brought in three machines, one at each end and one in the middle. By midday, all the houses were knocked down.”
Approximately 130 families from La Forestal were chosen to move into social housing in La Mena 2, as part of Mayor Barrera’s broader relocation plan. But construction of La Mena 2 wasn’t finished. The households accepted monthly stipends between $132 and $200 to cover rent in the private market while they awaited the completion of their permanent homes.
Things Fall Apart
After April, the scope, pace, and size of Quito’s Relocation Program significantly expanded. Mayor Barrera had a strong ally of the same party at the national level—President Rafael Correa. In June 2011, Quito’s municipal government and the Ecuadorian Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MIDUVI) signed a grant agreement stating that 360 relocated households would be supported through the development of La Mena 2. In tandem with municipal subsidies, the majority of relocated households would need to pay approximately $3,850 out of their own pockets to own an apartment in La Mena 2.
With strong relations between the Barrera mayoralty and the Correa presidency, along with a national oil boom, the EPMHV decided to build 44 additional units in La Mena 2. In all, 404 families were relocated with 360 available subsidies, seemingly with an internal assumption that the details could get smoothed out later. According to a 2024 government document, 7 of those 44 households have left La Mena 2, while 37 still await their promised subsidy.
Soon after he moved into La Mena 2, when Achig attempted to close on the title for his new home in 2012, an attorney informed him that he was missing his subsidy. When he contacted the city, he was told that he would receive it in a month. He didn’t.
When Mauricio Rodas won Quito’s mayoral election over Barrera in 2014, division between the municipality and federal government emerged. During Rodas’s mayoralty, the EPMHV began to experience significant capacity issues—significant delays on construction projects, budget shortfalls, and difficulty collecting payments from relocated households.
Beyond La Mena 2, Quito’s entire climate relocation program of $11.6 million dollars was in jeopardy, with MIDUVI and the EPMHV in disagreement on how to proceed and close out their grant agreements. Federal-municipal tensions complicated the ability to resolve the issue of the 44 households without title in La Mena 2.
Every year, we pay taxes . . . my husband asks, ‘Why isn’t this in my name . . . ?’ It’s all been out of our pockets, and yet there’s no hope that they’ll give us title.”
Maria Zambrano, a La Mena 2 resident
After years with no result, many families hired an attorney to resolve the situation. However, several households say that the attorney, referred by the EPMHV, disappeared after collecting $200 deposit payments. Per one resident, the EPMHV then denied having referred the lawyer.
In January 2016, MIDUVI sent the EPMHV a proposal to cover the 44 subsidies with federal funds initially dedicated for a separate social housing project. EPMHV accepted. But by late 2017, MIDUVI was requesting that the EPMHV settle municipal debts. The shift could be due to Lenín Moreno’s inauguration to the presidency in May; such transitions often lead to changes in the operations and personnel of federal agencies.
In 2018, with the help of Achig’s daughter Lucia, an attorney, residents went to the public defender’s office and submitted a request to commence legal proceedings in order to retain their subsidies. Public hearings were held from January 2019 to December 2020 without meaningful results. In 2021, the matter seemingly went untouched.
While these residents fight for justice, they still have to pay property taxes on homes which they do not own. Yet because residents do not hold title—EPMHV does—they are not eligible for exemptions. This affects most notably low-income senior households, which would normally be eligible for a 50 percent property tax discount.
“Every year, we pay taxes… my husband asks, ‘Why isn’t this in my name instead of the EPMHV?’” says Maria Zambrano, a 73-year-old resident in La Mena 2. “It’s all been out of our pockets, and yet there’s no hope that they’ll give us title.”
Where We Are Now
From June 2022 to February 2023, the public defender’s office initiated a series of public hearings and working meetings with relevant federal and municipal agencies. Then, in April 2023, MIDUVI issued a formal report. Thirteen residents in La Mena 2 without subsidy were named in the original government lists of beneficiaries. According to MIDUVI, the subsidies for these residents had already been transferred to the municipality. Because the city had received these subsidies, these thirteen households should be eligible to receive title. 2023 government documents continued to focus on subsidy access for this group of thirteen, though by 2024, this sub-group was not mentioned in an EPMHV memo.
In June 2023, under the new mayoral regime of Pabel Muñoz, the EPMHV issued a memo to MIDUVI, returning to the idea of moving subsidies from another social housing development to La Mena 2.
In April 2024, the EPMHV sent MIDUVI a memo about the liquidation of the two grant agreements governing the relocation program, signed over 10 years ago. There were suggestions on how to provide subsidies to the remaining 37 families in La Mena 2.
Throughout 2024, families in La Mena 2 continued to pursue legal action. In late April, I received a message from Lucia Achig. “The situation is fatal.”
Achig said that the attorney at the public defender’s office told her that they’re waiting for superiors to sign a document allowing affected households to pursue their claim, yet these superiors have no knowledge of the case. As of August, the legal demand has yet to be signed. In the meantime, residents are essentially blocked from formal legal channels. They can’t afford a private attorney to proceed with a demand.
While attempting to press forward with legal action this summer, residents connected with an Ecuadorian journalist at a well-known publication, Vistazo. Soon before Vistazo covered their story, the public defender’s office requested a meeting, sending formal communication to Mayor Muñoz and the head of MIDUVI. As of late July, MIDUVI and the EPMHV were working to close out the relocation grant agreements. However, it remains unclear how the subsidies in La Mena 2 will factor in, given that the EPMHV has new leadership.
“I believe that the authorities should honor their word and their offer, and not make us suffer so much,” says Zambrano. “We are people of limited resources. My husband and I don’t work, and our children help with food… But they shouldn’t abuse our patience and poverty so much, because I know that rich people get everything, rich people are helped, but we are forgotten.”
What Can We Learn From Quito?
Climate migration is an emerging global reality, and other cities will have to confront the same problems as Quito. By designing and implementing its relocation plan from the top down, Quito’s municipal government and EPMHV essentially removed citizen participation from the equation. Even when residents voluntarily decided to leave their climate-vulnerable neighborhood, they were “assigned” an apartment elsewhere in the city. If relocated residents had a say in the design of social housing alternatives, perhaps they could have spoken out against a last-minute idea by the EPMHV to squeeze in 44 additional units in La Mena 2. And if a broader array of housing options had been designed and put forward by residents themselves, there could have been a greater willingness to participate in relocation.
Government and affected households alike cited rapid turnover within the city and federal governments as a barrier to implementation of the city’s relocation program. When a Quito mayor is elected, they typically appoint new heads of every agency, including the Secretaría de Seguridad and the EPMHV. Similarly, multiple government agencies play a role in the qualification of eligible households, designation of subsidy, and delivery of a home. This can complicate the ability to resolve a complex issue such as pending subsidies that go back 13 years and span 5 mayoral administrations.
Additionally, stakeholders should consider the capacity of public institutions in the implementation of a climate relocation program. Climate relocation is almost inherently complex and unpopular—people rarely want to move, because when they do, their entire lives are disrupted. In Quito, a newly established public housing authority was charged with constructing sizable multifamily social housing developments and delivering title to relocated families. If a public institution with greater technical capacity, experience, and resources had played this role, perhaps all of the households in La Mena 2 would have held title years ago.
Ultimately, though, the reality remains that a group of families are housing-vulnerable more than 10 years after the fact. Justice has been substantially delayed, though the affected residents in La Mena 2 continue organizing to ensure that it is not denied.
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