“Informal Settlements and Tenancy Arrangements:
policy options from a regional perspective”
International Conference:
Built Environment Issues
in Small Island States and Territories
Kingston, Jamaica
August 2005
Presentation
1.
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5.
The Regional Context
Urban Poverty and Habitat Precariousness in LAC
The Informal Settlements Challenge: Urban
informality and tenancy insecurity
Regional experience: regularization programmes
Policy and programme recomendations
1. The Regional Context
IN 2004, REGIONAL ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
EXPANDS
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
6
110
5.1
108
5
4.5
3.7
4
104
102
3
2.3
100
1.6
2
98
96
1
0.5
0.4
94
0
92
-0.6
-1
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
90
2003
2004
Per capita GDP Index
GDP Annual Growth Rate
106
Regional Urbanization
100
75
50
25
0
1950
1960
1970
The Carib.
1980
1990
Central Am.
2000
South A
2010
Region
2020
2030
SOCIAL SPENDING PER SECTOR US$
214
179
150
129
101
101
91
85
82
34
26
SOCIAL SECURITY
EDUCATION
1990
HEALTH
1995
2000
25
HOUSING
Synthesis of regional situation (1)
• Increased economic development in the countries of the region
and increased social spending have not been able to reduce
levels of inequality in income distritution.
• Economic growth has permited an increase in occupation levels,
but this has not translated into a decrease in unemployment.
• The dynamic sectors of the economy are concentrated in cities
due to: agglomeration economies; markets (inputs, goods and
services, work); knowledge management.
• Urbanization has generated: a scarcity of public services;
inequity in habitat conditions; social and spatial segregation;
increased poverty, inequity and unemployment; environmental
degradation y increased vulnerability to natural and
technological disasters.
Synthesis of regional situation (2)
• Increased policy efficiency and effectiveness demands the
integration of sector strategies in specific territories.
• Socio-economic development requires urban polices that
combine functionality with habitability within a framework for
growth and equity, with a focus on employment generation and
business development.
2. Characteristics of urban poverty and
precarious urban settlements in the LAC Region
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In 2002, the region’s urban poor amounted to over 146,7
million people, of whom 51,6 million were indigent (ECLAC
estimates, 2004).
Two out of every three poor people in the region are city
dwellers. (*)
Almost 70% of total regional urban poverty is concentrated
in urban areas in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. (**)
Urban poverty takes the form of low earnings related to
precarious employment, a shortage of educational capital and
patrimonial assets, and shows inequities based on gender. (***)
While economic growth and increased social spending in
all the countries have enabled them to make progress in
reducing the percentage of people living in poverty, national
inequality indices have remained high or deteriorated outright.
ECLAC analyses show that wealth factors affect inequity as well
as poverty.
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Serious housing problems persist in the region, especially
among the poorer sectors of the population: 45% of these
problems consist of quantitative shortages, while the rest
consist in needed improvements.
Among poor households, the most widespread problem
observed is lack of access to sanitation, followed by lack of
access to secure tenure and to drinking water networks. Next in
importance is the problem of poorly constructed housing. Lastly,
overcrowding continues to be a predominant feature of poor
urban households. (Unmet housing needs)
Diversity of expressions between countries, within countries,
between cities (metro., large, intermediate), and within cities
Water and sanitation/poor sectors: quality and effective access
issues. Wide variations among poor sectors in quality of access
-> principally due to age of settlement
Heterogeneity of situations for the urban poor:
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Insufficient and unstable income, translating into inadequate
consumption capacity
Discrimination and limited access to the formal labor market,
especially for women and specific ethnic groups; this also
translates into a loss of traditional social and family values
Risks due to instability and inadequate provision of basic goods,
considering the need for different types of goods including social,
human, financial, physical and natural
Inadequate quality and insecurity in housing and the lack of basic
services, that exhibits risks due to critical sanitary situations,
pollution, violence, natural and technological disasters, etc.
Lack of effective power in social control, and political decision
making and representation systems
Regional panorama is characterized by:
• the presence of multiple, complex and interrelated
expressions of urban poverty => demands the
application of differentiated management modalities
• the diversity of expressions of the precariousness of
habitat (by country, by type of city, within cities, by
type of household) => suggests flexible and diverse
interventions oriented to specific territories and
vulnerable groups.
3. The Informal Settlements Challenge
•Urban informality
•Precarious habitat conditions
•Tenancy insecurity
• Scarcity of land due to increased demand for housing, services,
facilities, recreational spaces, industrial parks and transport
networks (*)
• Increased land prices in LAC cities due to scarcity of urbanized
land and the speculative nature of land markets in the highly
urbanized cities in the region.
• Two markets exist for accessing land:
– affluent sectors have secure legal access via the formal
market
– low-income sectors use survival strategies (**)
• the informal land market or
• occupying high-risk land
• The poor occupy the urban periphery or vulnerable areas ->
increases socio spatial segregation (heterogeneity of situations)
Types of urban informality (land)
• Heterogeneity of situations, within cities; submarkets within
informal settlements
• (1) Direct occupation: public or private lands; settlement,
individual lots
• (2) Illegal markets: clandestine developments irregular (horizontal
property) land development; indigenous lands illegally
incorporated into urban area; agricultural cooperatives
transformed into urban lands; legal submarkets that have
generated irregular property arrangements
• (3) Urban-environmental: developed areas w/o consideration of
state regulation regarding subdivision and in environmental
protection areas; risks of flooding; polluted lands; near to brick
works, clandestine garbage dumps; lack of infrastructure; limited
access to public transport
(Based on Clichevsky 2005, ECLAC)
Magnitude of urban informality
Proportion of population living in informal situations in ALC:
– Argentina: 17% Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires: 10%
(1.380 thous.)
– Belo Horizonte, Brazil: 20%
– Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 20% (1.400 thous.)
– San Pablo, Brazil: 20% (3.400 to 3.750 thous.)
– Bogotá, Colombia: 24% (1.400 thous.)
– Quito Ecuador: 50% (750 thous.)
– Tegucigalpa, Honduras: 40% (320 thous.)
– Lima, Peru: 37 to 40% (2.623 to 3.000 thous.)
– Mexico City (Fed. Dist..), Mexico: 40% (7.200 thous.)
(Clichevsky 2003, ECLAC)
Direct Occupation
TEGUCIGALPA (Honduras), Developing neighborhood
in Los Pinos
(Clichevsky 2005)
Direct Occupation
TEGUCIGALPA (Honduras), Developing neighborhood
in Los Pinos
(Clichevsky 2005)
Direct Occupation
City of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Villa 31
(Clichevsky 2005)
Direct Occupation
City of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Villa 20
(Clichevsky 2005)
Direct Occupation
Santiago del Estero (Argentina),Villa La Católica
(Clichevsky 2005)
Informality via market
Quito(Ecuador), San Jacinto &Santa Leticia, Lower
sides of Pichincha Volcano. Illegal Land Development
(Clichevsky 2005)
Informality via market
Quito. Mulanga Lower sides of Pichincha Volcano.
Illegal Land Development
(Clichevsky 2005)
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Early 2000s, 128 million people living in slums (32% of the urban
population (*)
Slums, comprising a wide-range of low-income settlements (from
deteriorated inner city dwellings to informal settlements with inadequate
housing, infrastructure and services, overcrowding, in risk areas and
with a variety of tenure arrangements) are in many cities, the only
option available for the urban poor.
National approaches to slums have shifted from negative policies
(evictions, involuntary resettlement, benign neglect) to more positive
policies.
Regional consensus that strategies based on settling populations in the
areas that they already occupy provide the most socially and
economically desirable solution to the problem of informal settlements.
In spite of this, property insecurity continues to exist in the region.
In informal settlements, tenancy irregularity is a factor which increases
ambiguity and social tension(**).
4. Regional Experience: regularization
programmes
Programme approaches: (irregular settlements are accepted as an
urban reality that cannot be eradicated, and as a part of the
process of growth in cities; degrees of recognition of social
construction of habitat)
(1) Legal regularization: refers to legalization of ownership,
recognition of the right to occupy the property for specific
periods, and the sale or donation of land to its occupants
(2) Urban regularization: refers to the process of recognizing
irregularly occupied subdivisions as regular urban zones,
that will in turn be serviced and pay taxes as the rest of the
city. Improvements in one or more habitat dimensions
(3) Integrated neighbourhood upgrading programmes: refers to
integrated approaches including legalization of ownership,
strengthening of social organizations, employment and
income generation, and urban-environmental improvements
Legalization programmes
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Complex and slow processes in the majority of the Region’s countries:
complexity in urban informality; multiple actors; lack of transparency in
ownership; high volume of titles to be processed; institutional rigidities
and out of date cadastres; weak technical capacity
Beneficiary requirements (vary by country): (i) lot occupancy during a
minimum period of time, (ii) no other property ownership, (iii) household
head status (often priority is given to female heads of households), (iv)
no pending debts with the State, and, often, (v) sufficient income levels
which would permit co-payment .
These requirements, in addition to the responsibilities that beneficiaries
must assume post-legalization (payments, limitation on sale), may
constitute important obstacles for an important portion of informal
settlement inhabitants to access these programmes.
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Argentina: national level policies include the National Programme of Fiscal
Lands (Programa Arraigo ), and a 1994 law (24.374) regarding legalizing private
lands. Both policies are implemented via local governments.
1988 Brazilian Constitution incorporates the social function of property as a
concept and creates a national institution for legal regularization. The majority of
the State Constitutions, Municipal Organic Laws and Master Plans developed
during the 1990s, explicitly incorporate this objective. In 2001, the City Statute
completes the legal framework for recognizing the social right of all inhabitants
of informal settlements to a house.
Between 1993 and 1996, in Brazil’s forty-five largest municipalities, legal
regularization programmes assisted some 86,379 families. Morar Legal, Rio de
Janeiro Municipality (financed jointly by IDB and the Caixa Economica Federal)
regularizes (urban and legal) irregular and clandestine municipal lots. Via
participatory processes, based on eligibility criteria defined in the city’s master
plan, more than 35 thousand lots were urbanized and regularized.
In Guayaquil, between 1993 and 2000, more than 103,000 titles were granted,
as part of a participatory process that formally integrated marginal settlements
into municipal urban development plans.
In Peru, by November 2000, the Commission for the Formalization of Informal
Property (COFOPRI), (IBRD) granted more than 1 million titles in the country,
half of which correspond to Lima.
Specific Tenancy Issues (1)
• Various mechanisms may be used to obtain tenure security,
ranging from intermediate tenure to “hard” or full deeds
• Intermediate tenures may not be completely invulnerable to
political changes, particularly those involving more authoritarian
governments, because they only offer partial security (*)
• The public deed (most far-ranging legal instance in tenure
security), is obtained in regularization processes through:
– direct negotiations between the owner –be it a private or public
entity- and each occupant
– the expropriation of the land for public use and the subsequent
adjudication of the ownership of the lots to their current occupants
– judicial adjudication of the lots (**)
• In some countries, the number of intermediate tenures and
public deeds granted through the tenure security programs is
very limited as compared to the size of the population living in
informal conditions.
Specific Tenancy Issues (2)
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As studies of the Peruvian case demonstrate, there is a need to raise
awareness of the “registry culture,” or the importance of acquiring a deed to
one’s property because people who live in illegal situations in countries in which
eviction is not common may not even be aware that they are doing so.
It is also essential to observe that land titling has been carried out in areas with
serious environmental problems such as flooding or erosion. While this practice
may not represent a legal danger, it may pose an urban environmental risk for
the inhabitants.
Lessons learned:
– Include a legal framework that permits intermediate tenure, which can be a
real solution to the problem and offer a more secure alternative to
possession of a public deed
– Expand tenure regularization programmes to include privately owned land
given that these projects are generally limited to public lands (given the high
cost of expropriation and/or negotiations with the private owners of
occupied lands)
– Include secure cadastres / property registries for both public and privately
owned land
– Institute subsidies for registering deeds so that a greater portion of the
population can have access to land titling processes
– Increase control of tenure security processes so that they are not
implemented in environmentally insecure and particularly high-risk areas.
Upgrading strategies (urban and integral)
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Incorporate investments to improve infrastructure and urban facilities in
neighbourhoods as well as develop programmes designed to alleviate the main
social problems of the communities and improve their quality of life as a whole
In situ urbanization programmes that take advantage of the investments the
residents have already made in their housing solutions, and emphasize
community participation in the execution of operations
Lessons learned:
– participation by municipalities and communities in programme execution
– effective cross sector coordination of public programmes at national and
sub-national levels
– adequate technical and management capacity at execution levels
– effective coordination of physical and social investments
– integration into public service networks (via physical connections as well as
considering prices), and further maintenance and follow-up activities
– effective mechanisms for cost control and resource targeting
One critical economic and social aspect that has not been fully incorporated into
these programmes is the effective creation of income generating opportunities.
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Argentina, the Neighbourhood Improvement Programme (PROMEBA)
began in 1997 with financing from the IDB. Projects that include
drinking water, water treatment, sanitation, electrical energy, legal
regularization, social support and environmental mitigation
infrastructure components are eligible for programme financing. The
programme model has been replicated in various provinces.
The Favela/Barrio programme (BID) operating since 1995 in Rio de
Janeiro, sought the integration, in a period of four years, of 105 medium
size slum communities into the city fabric. Via complementary
municipal and programme interventions, the programme financed
infrastructure, roads, social and recreation infrastructure, parks, credit
for building materials, incentives for training in small businesses,
business formation and child-care services. Communities were
selected based on an objective points system based on poverty
indicators and investment cost efficiency. The two phases of the
programme had an investment of US$ 600 million, and benefited
approximately 500.000 inhabitants.
5. Policy and programme recommendations
1.
Define policies and programmes within a framework for
sustainable development (consider and integrate social,
environmental and economic dimensions) and for capacity
and opportunity generation for poor urban sectors.
2. Define policies and programmes with superior development
objectives:
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Improve habitat conditions (physical and economic
capitals) for urban poor
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Improve human and social capitals for urban poor
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Conserve urban environment and reduce urban
vulnerability (natural capital) for urban poor
3. Use differentiated management models and flexible and
progressive intervention strategies oriented towards specific
territories and vulnerable groups.
4. Develop appropriate institutional and financial frameworks
that incorporate governance conditions.
Improve the poor’s access to land in urban
settlements
Policy pillar 1: Improve tenancy security
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Develop and offer alternative forms of tenancy
Integrate the environmental dimension into legal regularization
programmes
Integrate the management of vulnerable urban areas into legal
regularization programmes
Incorporate credit programmes into legal regularization programmes
Differentiate between legal regularization in private lands from
programmes in public lands. Develop policy alternatives for private
lands
Develop and implement property cadastres for public and private lands
Within legal regularization programmes, develop and incorporate
policies regarding the price of land
Incorporate the participation of the population in the different phases of
programme development and execution
Incorporate the participation of municipalities and midlevel
governemnts in the management of the programmes
Policy pillar 2: Develop policies in relation to the supply
of urban land for poor urban sectors
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Reformulate urban land and housing standards
Use instruments for the “creation“ of land and invest the generated
resources in land and housing progarmmes for low income sectors
Use economic instruments related to the price of land
Create land reserves (public and private)
Improve the quality and access to market information in order to
make more transparent land markets
Improve the access of the population to information about how land
markets work
Assume an integrated approach: incorporate
urban land issues into a Sustainable Urban
Agenda for the Alleviation of Urban Poverty
(land, services, housing, public space, income
and employment generation)
In addition to improving access to land, this agenda should define policy
options and actions:
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to provide Improved conditions for the equitable access to urban services for the
poor (special considerations for water and sanitation networks; continuity and
sustainability of services; upgrading in slums => technology, negotiation of
connections, part., microfin., actors, SME, env. Educ.
to provide and improve housing for poor urban sectors (flow of new housing =>
dens., targeting, progressive, connection, financing schemes, etc.; progr. to
improve stock; upgrading slums => inclusion and connectedness to polis,
integrated interventions, social construction, micro fin., part., actors, env. impact
eval .)
to provide public space in processes that favor sociability, diversity, security and
integration into urban life (new, rescue deteriorated; micro, meso and urban
scales; access and connectedness; multi-functional, symbolic elements, security;
social capital processes; partnerships; social interventions)
to provide for the improved access of the urban poor to employment
opportunities and to more stable incomes (improve asset portfolio => training in
construction area; local child care; improve access to transport networks; groups
saving schemes; informal sector and public space; incorporate ME in habitat
progr.; productive spaces. Create business oppts. => promote labor ints. tech. In
housing and infra devt , etc.)
Lucy Winchester
Expert, Sustainable Development and Human
Settlements Division, Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), United
Nations, Santiago