The Federation is also responsible for legislating urbanistic regulations.

Law No. 8405, dated 17 September 1998, “On urbanistics”; Law No. 8561, “On expropriations and temporary use of private property for public interest”;

For the most part, authorities do not repress the poor when their illegal situation is limited to lack of a property title, allowing them to remain in place while expropriating the property or resorting to concessions for the use of urban land, among other urbanistic instruments.

To a large extent, housing laws are municipal laws and address mainly compliance with urbanistic standards, debureaucratization of procedures for home registration, concession of public areas to poor families, engineering requirements, hygienic conditions, salubrity, illumination, size of rooms, and regularization of irregular and clandestine subdivisions.

With respect to legislation on land use and distribution, land acquisition, subdivision, lot demarcation, expropriation (including indemnification provisions) and real property ordering (including procedures for community participation), it should be noted that the Constitution has empowered the Federation, the states, and the Federal District to legislate on urbanistic matters and the municipality to legislate on matters of social interest.

It is incumbent upon municipalities to draft a master plan and the legislation on the use and occupation of urban land (permitted uses, urbanistic indexes), urban zoning and subdivision (urban occupation indexes, lot size and use coefficients), all in accordance with federal legislation on urban land subdivision.