center homes to build newer residence s in Maputo's outskirts, or subúrbios, where there is more land availability and a growing middle-class (Roque, Mucavele and Noronha, 2016; Sambo, 2016; Morton, 2019). As Morton (2015) explains, this income generation strategy is born out of a history of struggle to survive in the city center during the civil war period in the 1980s, when life in Maputo was typified by haphazard or absent basic services - even in the relatively well- developed cement city. During that period, apartments abandoned b y the Portuguese in Maputo's 8 poshest central neighborhoods after independence were allocated by the new FRELIMO -run government - rent free - to government employees and military who fought for independence. Those who managed to survive the difficulties of life in the city during the immediate post- independence period and to maintain their residences in Maputo's center profited from the growing rental value of their homes as new international stakeholders arrived during the period of market reforms in Mozambique in the 1990s (Morton 2019). The demand for office space and housing by international stakeholders - from the multilateral financial institutions and bilateral donors through to international non-governmental organizations - since the end of the civil war th and the explosion of free-market reforms in the last decade of the 20 century created an easy income strategy that has only become stronger with the more recent arrival of a diversifying class of international interests represented by an uptick in foreign investors since 2010, coupled with the growth of bilateral relationships. As in other rising middle-class urban societies, in this context, there is little incentive for the propertied class of Mozambican nationals in Maputo to push for fiscal reforms that promote updated property taxation systems (Kingombe, 2014). Such reforms would only diminish their rents. Yet little of the construction buzz described here is acknowledging or accommodating the more significant affordable housing demands of the urban poor, who represent at least 75 percent of 9 the population in Maputo. Public policies have promised much but delivered little in the struggle for affordable housing in Maputo, as well as Mozambique as a whole. Current Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi promised to build 35,000 new homes between 2015 and 2019, but the construction process has already shown that this ambitious goal is beyond current capacities. In 2016, the national Economic and Social Plan (Plano Económico e Social - PES) targeted the construction of 1,775 new houses in the largely rural provinces of Tete, Zambézia, and Cabo Delgado, but only 268 houses were actually built (Caldeira 2017a). Despite this shortfall, in 2017 Nyusi again extended the promise of State-constructed homes throughout the country, promising to build an extraordinary 138,000 new homes over the next 12 years using the Housing Development Fund (Fundo para o Fomento de Habitação - FFH) in a new initiative called the Integrated Program for the Massive Construction of Social Housing (Programa Integrado de Construção Massiva de Habitação Social - PICMHS). Critics note that at least $989 million USD would be needed for the realization of that number of new houses - a budget which the national accounts do not include and which international donors are not targeting. Furthermore, while 60 percent of the homes are meant to be for Mozambicans earning the equivalent of roughly $780 to $3900 USD a year, the personal home mortgages required to make these homes accessible to such a population do not exist (Caldeira 2017b). As aforementioned,