Land Tenure

Finding Alternatives to all Forms of Eviction

Security of tenure is, perhaps, the single most enabling factor contributing toward people's housing processes around the world. It provides a tangible asset, a contractual agreement between the citizen and the State, demarcating ownership of a plot of land. It is a promise of permanent residence and a clear statement that the government will not evict residents without much negotiation and compensation. When communities of the urban poor do not have ownership rights to their settlement, the impulse toward improvement is stifled because there is no incentive to invest in something that will eventually be bulldozed. But with a formal address and title agreement, communities naturally begin to build incremental structures because every investment is secure.

Even so, securing tenure is not without its complexities and often leads to the softest form of eviction yet. In many cases, simply giving out title deeds has created an increase in poverty by placing slumdwellers at the mercy of a voracious property market. Slightly richer people, with and eye toward entrepreneurial development, scoop up newly secured property to resell or rent. And what family isn't going to trade in a shack for more money than they could get in 5 years?

And yet, this often leads to a chorus of accusations coming from every quarter: "See what they do when you give them a house? They sell it an move back to the slum."

Such tenure arrangements can, in fact, be used as a thinly disguised way of using market forces to push poor people out, without messy demolitions, bulldozers, or bad press. Instead, eviction happens gradually, one plot at a time, until one day all the poor people are gone.

For SDI, the goal then is to create tenure situations that work for communities without subjecting them to increased market forces. Poor people in South Africa, India, Brazil and Kenya have been instrumental in designing communal tenure arrangements that ensure the current residents actually benefit from increased security, and can set about building their dream houses little by little.