Kenya: Entire Cabinet to Undergo Wealth Probe

Not exactly related to squatter, but...

this is an earth-shattering event: financial disclosure for all the ministers in the Kenyan government. Of course, the information should also be public, and it should include President Mwai Kibaki. But this small step forward in transparency may loom large in coming years. And if any big-time Kenyan politicians are profiting from huts in the country's squatter areas, this would be the right time for the information to come out.

the true cause of shack fires

from a press release sent out by Abahlali baseMjondolo, after another slum fire killed a 70 year old man:

These fires are not acts of god. They are a direct consequence of the eThekwini Municipality’s infamous and unconstitutional 2001 decision to suspend the provision of electricity to shack settlement.

...

S’bu Zikode, President of Abahlali baseMjondolo, said "They tell us that they will clear the slums by 2010 but they won’t tell us what their plan is – where they want to put us and when they want to move us. They will not or cannot show us any programme. While we wait for a promise with no details we are being killed. We seriously condemn this incident. We are saying that the government is responsible for this death. Everyday we are making noise about fire, about the urgent need for water, electricity and toilets, about the need for land and housing in the city. It is not like we are keeping quiet. Everybody knows what is needed but the government just ignores us."

Aguablanca: eviction in Colombia

Aguablanca is a squatter community of about 600,000 people in Cali, Colombia. At 3am on June 16th, 900 police officers arrived to smash 1,200 homes in the community. In the melee, a six-month-old child died of exposure to tear gas. A 1 1/2 year old kid was smashed in the head and is still hospitalized. And many families are still living in crude conditions on a nearby roadside.

For what? These kinds of violent forced evictions are among the worst excesses governments can visit on people.

[Thanks to TEO for the link!]

World Bank: billions for Lagos slums

The World Bank offers N25.2 billion ($200 million) to upgrade slums in Lagos. But what is the money for, who will control it, how will it be spent, will the slum-dwellers themselves be involved, will people be able to afford what the World Bank money might produce? Money alone is not the issue.

ARE SQUATTER COMMUNITIES SUSTAINABLE?

A reader dropped this big question in a comment on a prior post and I figured I'd open it up here. So, blog readers, have at it. Yea or nay? Why, why not? Let's get a discussion going.

Shack Fire as Excuse for Eviction

Three hundred squatters in the Quarry Road settlement in Durban were burned out of their homes Friday night. Now the government is exploiting the situation, pushing squatters to relocate to the edge of town and even attempting to extort money for old shipping pallets that were delivered to help in recreating the lost shelters. South Africa Indymedia has the story.

Bahamas squatters hold firm against the government

Squatters in the Bahamas, who have occupied government-owned land for several decades, are fighting to keep their homes, The Bahama Journal reports.

In Iraq, a failed housing market

Not squatters, but on their way, perhaps. This story on the housing crisis in Iraq from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting shows that market forces are conspiring against ordinary Iraqis in Sulaimaniyah.

Squatters in the Solomon Islands

The number of squatters in the major city of the Solomon Islands, a South Pacific archipelago of 1,000 small islands and coral atolls, is growing by an astounding 26 percent a year, the government admits. Honiara, the capital city, is now 1/3 squatters. Wow.

Kazakh squatters clash with police

Squatters in Almaty, Kazakhstan's commercial (though not political) capital, are fighting government forces seeking to demolish their homes, Reuters reports.

Putting people above politicians

S'bu Zikode, president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a movement that arose in Foreman Road and other squatter communities in Durban, South Africa, writes eloquently of his country's discrimination against the poor. From The Mercury newspaper.

His critique: 'the government, other organisations and academics speak about the poor all the time but so few want to speak to the poor.'

His solution: 'Poverty and neglect by the state have thrown us together in our shack settlements and from that togetherness we have become strong. The politics of the strong poor is anti-party politics. Our politics is not to put someone in an office. Our politics is to put our people above that office.'

His hope: 'I am optimistic that the "will" of the poor will soon be done because the poor are the majority of this country and the majority is beginning to speak for itself.'

International Poverty Pimps

Here's an absolute scandal: One-quarter of the world's development aid to poor countries is going to consultants and close to another 25 percent is "swallowed in administration costs, double counting of debt relief, tied aid, donor aid that is allocated to geopolitical and commercial priorities and domestic refugee spending in donor countries," according to a new report by ActionAid International. The bottom line: half of all development aid doesn't reach the poor. InterPress News Service has the details.

The report, called RealAid 2, can be found here.

No freedom for the poor

The mjondolo settlement in Durban's Foreman Road, as visited by a reporter from the Mail & Guardian newspaper, illustrates the growing inequities of the new new South Africa. Forced relocation is not the answer. Squatter empowerment is.

Rhino charges on

A victory for Rhino, Geneva's oldest squat, as reported by swissinfo. Essentially, Switzerland's top court voided an eviction order pushed by Geneva prosecutor Daniel Zappelli, asserting that the squatters were no danger, either to themselves or to public order. As Swiss journalist Philippe de Rougemont writes, "The court's decision is a strong message to the over-zealous Daniel Zappelli, the Geneva state prosecutor. He has been criticised even by people from his own conservative group for being too agressive about sympathetic and arty squatters, instead of fully cooperating with foreign justice departments to help squeeze the big fish: money launderers, tax evaders, etc, that flock towards Switzerland and Geneva." Thanks to Philippe for passing on the good news.

The ANC's eviction plans in Durban

At the recent World Urban Forum, I asked Lindiwe Sisulu, South Africa's Housing Minister, about forced evictions in Durban. In case some readers of this blog can't believe that the African National Congress government engages in such tactics, so reminiscent of Apartheid, here's a press release from Abahlali baseMjondolo, a squatter organizing group that has emerged as one of the most exciting bottom-up social movements in the country. Abahlali says that, despite fine words in favor of squatters, the ANC, at least on the local level, is pushing a policy of "mass evictions and forced removals under its 'slum clearance' programme."

MOTALA HEIGHTS (PINETOWN) EVICTION CRISIS CONTINUES

Two hundred families in the Motala Height Settlement are facing eviction at the hands of the eThekwini Municipality [the official name for the government of the city of Durban]. Legal experts have declared that the planned evictions are both unconstitutional and illegal. The Motala Heights community has declared that it will resist all attempts at eviction in the courts and by mass mobilisation.

After Ward Councillor Derek Dimba arrived at the settlement on 17 June 2006 with police and private security to mark out the homes slated for destruction the community quickly mobilised and won a promise that the process will stopped until a meeting with Dimba.

But yesterday Officer Pillay of the SAPS [the South African Police Service] returned to the settlement with police and private security back up and tried to continue the process of identifying homes for demolition. The community stopped the process. Pillay promised to return and break down the shacks. The Motala Heights Development Committee told him that "This is the land where we belong. This is not the land where you belong. Don't come back without our permission."

The Motala Heights settlement lies amongst the gum tress on the hill behind Motala Heights suburb which is, in turn, just behind the many factories in Pinetown's industrial area. It was founded in 1994 and the residents mostly come from Zululand, the Eastern Cape and Ixopo although some are from as far away as the Free State. Almost everyone came here to work or to reunite families divided by migrant labour. Most of the men in the settlement work in the factories and most of the women work in the houses in the adjacent suburb. There are almost 300 shacks in the settlement. The land is owned by local tycoon Ricky Govender and he is aiming to extend the suburb up the hill in a large private development after the shack dwellers have been evicted.

Dutch squatters fight to save their homes

Squatters in the Netherlands are organizing against a government proposal to reverse the country's notably liberal laws on squatting. See also this dispatch on squat.net.

Dutch squatters have reclaimed a tremendous amount of housing and been a positive force in helping to alleviate the country's housing crisis. To join the struggle to support the squatters, visit petitie.squat.net/en/.

Squatter Communities on Fiji

In further proof that squatters exist in the most unlikely places, The Fiji Sun reports that squatter communities are growing as urbanization continues on the island. The housing ministry is vowing to relocate any squatters who lose their land leases.

Thanks to Munna Prasad for the link!

World Urban Forum

Vancouver, Jan. 20th: I arrived this afternoon in the temporary capital of the empire of ineffectual good guys known as the World Urban Forum. I'm cynical about these UN-sponsored gatherings (can't ya tell), but being a fly on the wall does give an opportunity to learn some things and make some contacts.

My own bad planning ensured that I was in flight and thus missed the session on squatter communities this morning. But I checked out a session on creative muncipal approaches to financing stuff for the poor in French-speaking Africa in the afternoon. Niamey, in Niger, has started a plan to map the central city, giving every house and address, thus making it easier to collect taxes (indeed, the statistics bandied about show that the city quadrupled the amount it collected after the survey.) Dakar, Senegal has started a municipal microfinance credit program. And Douala, Cameroon has floated an issue of municipal bonds to provide seed money for housing for poor people.

The theme of the forum is "Turning Ideas Into Action" but so far, my experience is that there's more hot air than concerted, connected, committed political action. Still, I can hope.

U.N. Issues Global Slum Population Report

The misery takes the headlines. And it's true: the number of squatters is increasing, and there is no excuse, in the 21st century, for so many people to be living without necessary infrastructure. But the dispatches, like this Associated Press report printed in the Guardian miss the interesting news.

Consider: "Approximately one-fifth of slum households live in extremely poor conditions." That means lacking three or more of what the UN calls "basic shelter needs"--including a permanent structure, sufficient space, access to potable water, access to sanitation, and security of tenure.

Sounds awful, right? But it also means that 80 percent of the world's shanty dwellers don't live in extremely poor conditions. Memo to the UN: take a look at those communities.

All squatter encampments start in squalor, in mud, in despair. But 80 percent of them improve and grow and develop. What is it about the communities that improve that we can apply to the communities that haven't.

My observations from my two years living in squatter communities around the world: squatters need two things for their communities to grow:

1. some guarantee that they won't be evicted.
This doesn't have to be a title deed or 'security of tenure' in some legal sense. The favelas of Rio de Janeiro and most of the gecekondu communities of Istanbul don't have legal security. They have only customary security. But everyone has accepted that they will not be evicted and so their communities have been able to improve and grow and develop and are now true functioning neighborhoods.

2. some access to politics.
This can be seized from the system through tough-minded organizing or made use of because government reaches into the communities to forge partnerships. But communities need to work the political structure if they are to get some of the infrastructural goodies that only government can provide: water, sewers, garbage pick-up, electricity.

If the world can offer these two things, squatters will build and wire and pipe their communities and turn them into the cities of tomorrow.

Thousands left homeless

8,000 evicted from two forests in Kenya, the East African Standard reports.

Squatter Conflict in Kazakstan

Violence and a hunger strike as squatters in Almaty, the second-largest city of the former Soviet republic, battle to save their homes. The municipality wants the land, so the rumor goes, to turn it into a car racing track. So far, they have repulsed the police incursions and only a handful of homes have been destroyed. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has the story.

"Because the [squatter-held] area does not technically exist in the eyes of the municipal authorities, there are no public utilities such as water, electricity and gas," IWPR notes. How typical: people are denied services on a technicality. As a squatter told the reporter, "Like all citizens of this republic we have equal rights to land." I would add: And equal rights to services, too.

mud hut for sale

In the new South Africa, shanties have value. The shack in the photo recently sold for $21,000. The New York Times reports.

Landless workers occupy Brazilian Congress

1,000 landless laborers temporarily took over the lower house of the Brazilian Congress. Video here. BBC article here.

Fiji squatters ask: what would Jesus do?

A group of Fiji squatters who have held their land for 60 years has applied to the Human Rights Commission and the courts to help them resist an eviction effort mounted by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Fiji Times reports.

Eviction in Cambodian Capital

Seven hundred riot police wielding tear gas descend on a Phnom Penh squatter community that is home to 1,000 people, Reuters reports, via the New Zealand website stuff.co.nz.

Cambodian authorities want the squatters to move 15 km out of town. Here's why, according to the article: "Land disputes are a hot issue in Cambodia, where garment factories and hotels have sprung up to expand the major textile and tourist industries."

Zimbabwe Demolitions Visible From Outer Space

No lie. Check out the photos. The first shows Porta Farm, a squatter community outside Harare formed by government fiat when Zimbabwe evicted people 15 years ago before a Commonwealth summit. The second is the same community after Operation Murambatsvina, the demolition drive initiated by the government last year.



See the photos, enlarged.

Read the Amnesty International press release.

Red Ants evict squatters

Police shoot squatters. Twelve people injured. Shades of apartheid. But it's the new South Africa. And it's outrageous. The Star has the details.

Dhaka!

In Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, the number of squatters has incresed from 275,000 to 3.4 million over the past 30 years. Their communities occupy only 5.1 percent of the city's total land but are home to 37.4 percent of the city's population. And, while the total population density in the city is 121 people per acre, you have to multiply that by 7 in the shantytowns, which boast 891 persons per acre.

Amazingly (and contrary to the myth that there's an absolutely bleak future for squatters) more than half of these people have been able to knock down their mud and cardboard dwellings and rebuild them from brick.

You can read more on a recent census of the Dhaka's shanties (funded in part by the United States Agency for International Development!!!) in The Daily Star.

exactly who are the rats here?

This article on rat infestation appeared in South Africa's Daily News on May 17th. It's one of the last lines that's scary, spoken by Vernon Mchunu, spokesman for the Durban City Council: "We continue to clear slums so that rats will not have dirty places to breed."

Thanks to Richard for sending me the article. I'll let him provide the context: "This discourse is precisely, and I do mean precisely, the same as that used under apartheid and colonialism to justify previous state attacks" on the exact same squatter area.

Is there no difference between the African National Congress and Apartheid? It's a thought that may seem horrifying, but when it comes to squatters, the rhetoric and reality are largely the same.
*****

Rats Infest Cato Manor

By Bongani Mthembu

A recent study conducted by the eThekwini municipality's communicable
diseases unit has revealed that rats in Durban's Cato Manor settlement
have two potentially fatal diseases which are easily transmitted to
humans.

The findings of the Natural Sciences Museum's research are not being
taken lightly. According to the head of the communicable diseases unit,
Dr Ayo Olowolagba, plague, leptospirosis and poxoplasmosis were the
three diseases that were usually found in rats.

He said, however, that only leptospirosis and poxoplasmosis were
detected during the research. Olowolagba said it was extremely difficult to
diagnose the three diseases as their symptoms were similar to those of
the flu and needed to be tested in a special laboratory in order to be
detected.

The findings of the study have prompted council to distribute rat traps
to residents in areas identified as being prone to rat infestation
before the problem spreads to other parts of Durban.

"We are very concerned about the problem because many rats that we
caught had the diseases. The good news is that people who were found with
the diseases have never been sick. We believe those who came into
contact with the rats had immune systems that were strong enough to quell any
infections," said Olowolagba.

Council spokesman Vernon Mchunu said the extent of the health problem
caused by the rats had raised serious challenges for the municipality
which wants to curb the problem before it escalates.

"Council officials' visits to the area have resulted in the development
of the Cato Manor beautification campaign which is comprised of various
elements such as sensitising residents about the need to keep the
community clean," he said.

Mchunu added that council also wanted to ensure that wild cats which
fed on rats were prevented from coming into contact with humans.

"One of the identified causes for the prevalence and increase in the
number of rats in the area is the amount of litter and rubbish dumps. We
want to make sure the whole area is cleaned and that we continue to
clear slums so that rats will not have dirty places to breed," he said.

Mchunu said an educational door-to-door campaign dealing with
environmental health, waste disposal, sanitation, rats and remedies to deal with
related problems would be launched soon. Mchunu said 20 people had been
recruited from the area to assist in the campaign.

Published on the web by Daily News on May 17, 2006

land for the poor

Evo Morales starts land redistribution with government owned parcels. Reuters via the Tehran Times.

journalist shot gangland style

A reporter who helped squatters in his neighborhood buy the land on which they lived was gunned down in the Philippine capital yesterday. The Philippines Daily Inquirer has the story. Albert Orsolino covered Malacañang (the presidential palace) for the tabloid Saksi. He is the 78th Filipino reporter assassinated since the restoration of democracy 20 years ago, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines. Other reports suggest the media death count may be as high as 101.

Hip Hop against violence

MV Bill, an authentic purveyor of hardcore Brazilian funk, from Cidade de Deus (City of God) in Rio de Janeiro, has made a documentary and released a book about the the lives of young drug runners he knew in his community. Here's the lead, from a Bloomberg News dispatch:

In 1998, Alex Pereira Barboza began filming the lives of 17 ``falcons,'' teenage boys who work as lookouts for drug dealers in Brazil's shantytowns. By the time the documentary opened in March, 16 of them were dead -- killed in gang warfare or by police. The 17th was in jail. "I thank God that he was put in jail, because that's probably why he is still alive," Barboza, a 31-year-old rap musician who goes by the name MV Bill, said in an interview in Sao Paulo.

more murambatsvina

Targeting the poor in Zimbabwe. The Independent reports.

See also this Reuters report on people who are still homeless after the government-sponsored demolition drive that uprooted 700,000 from Zimbabwe's cities last year. Sadly, the article shows that the political opposition is feckless. Consider this comment: "We are not against the clean-up exercise per se, but what we are saying is that the government should have built new houses first, before demolishing the old ones. The whole thing was done in reverse," said Innocent Gonese, an opposition legislator who sits on a parliamentary committee on housing.

Well, yes. But even building new housing must be done in concert with squatters, who have often lived in their illegal homes for decades.

Irving Berlin in Delhi

There's an old Irving Berlin song about slum tourism (It's from the 1937 musical On The Avenue). It could be reprehensible, but the punchline is: "Let's go slumming, nose thumbing, on Park Avenue." The song turns the phenomenon on its head and suggests that average folk go prowling around the richest neighborhood of New York the same way the rich look at the poor--like animals in a social zoo ("Let's go smelling where they're dwelling, sniffing ev'rything the way they do.....Come let's eye them, pass right by them, looking down our noses as they do.") But the rich still persist in peeping at the poor. This Observer article (thanks Edesio for the link) covers the bizarre phenomenon in Delhi, with snippets about slum tourism to the Bronx to Rio and Rotterdam.

when in doubt, blame the squatters

Yeah, right: the lawyer for a landlord of a warehouse complex in Brooklyn implies that squatters might have caused the city's biggest fire in a decade, Newsday reports. The fire, just a few blocks from my home, essentially destroyed the seven-building complex, which was rezoned a few months back to allow fancy residential towers.

Meanwhile, the Mayor says the spread and pattern of the fire suggests that an accelerant might have been used.

What's a little arson among friends?

Unity!

Good advice from squatters in Malaysia: stay united. Squatters from four Kuala Lumpur communities--many of whom have lived there for a generation--have heard that the city wants to force them out to make way for a highway. Their only option: unite to fight for their rights. Looks like they had an excellent turnout at their recent meeting.

horribly unhealthy

Reuters reports on the impact of the drought in East Africa on sewage run-off in Kibera.

removal or renewal

KwaZulu Natal Province in South Africa is hot to punish squatters. This dispatch from the Sunday Tribune of 30 April (subscription only, thanks to Richard for emailing the text) asserts that the local housing minister is seeking to create a special security force to demolish illegal constructions. Similar units--known as 'red ants' because of the red coveralls they wear--are much maligned and feared in other provinces of South Africa. It seems like the new South Africa is embarking on a war on the poor.

******

KZN push for an end to slums
April 22, 2006

By Xolani Mbanjwa

The KwaZulu-Natal government is pushing for legislation that will give
local authorities the power to eradicate the proliferation of slums.

MEC for Housing and Local Government Mike Mabuyakhulu this week tabled
the Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act which, if passed, will be
the first of its kind in the country. Its aim is to eradicate shack
settlements by 2010, ahead of the 2020 target set under the Millennium
Development Goals.

Mabuyakhulu said he wanted the law to be passed before the end of the
current financial year. He wants municipalities to employ special units
similar to the so-called Red Ants - the shack settlement-clearing
security guards in Gauteng which are used to demolish illegal settlements.

The MEC said it had become clear over the past 12 years that housing
needs were evolving, bringing new challenges.

His visit to the Housing Conference in Kenya, involving all housing
ministers in Africa, prompted the department to "vigorously maximise
housing options if slums and informal settlements are to be eradicated".

"Our diplomatic approach is not working. We are now taking a stronger
approach," he said.

More than R500 million had been budgeted for slums clearance programmes
in 2005 and this year and a portion of the money had been used to clear
illegal shacks in areas such as Clare Estate in Durban.

"There is a huge need for housing in KwaZulu-Natal, and in Durban, in
particular, which has the biggest number of slums.

Trends all over the world show that the biggest cities attract slums.
The problem with housing is that when we relocate people to low-cost
houses, almost immediately new slums are erected elsewhere," said
Mabuyakhulu.

Development experts, however, have reacted to the proposed legislation
with apprehension.

Dr Richard Ballard, researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal
School of Development Studies, said, "Similar proposals have been kicked
around, but it is the first time that attempts have been made at enacting
such a law.


"It worries me, because with this legislation you're not addressing the
actual housing problem, but addressing it at the wrong end." Ballard
said people wanted to access economic opportunities closer to the city
because of jobs.

"I am not likening the ANC government to the apartheid government, but
this is what the apartheid government used to do to deal with similar
problems.

Why are we going back to those methods? It would seem that
policy-makers are more worried about the image of the city than the poor. It seems
as if they are punishing the victims of the system that brought them
there in the first place."

In his budget speech last year, Mabuyakhulu said an audit undertaken by
his department had identified about 250 000 slums and informal
settlements, about 80 000 of which were found in the greater Durban area.

Last year the department was able to complete about 40 000 low-cost
houses in the province and now aimed to build 250 000 by 2010, with 49 000
units under construction.

Since 1996 the KwaZulu-Natal government has built more than 500 000
houses.

Appealing for parliamentarians to support the proposed legislation,
Mabuyakhulu said, "It is my honour to announce that the department has
conducted an audit and compiled a schedule of existing slums.

This schedule has guided the department in its drive to eradicate slums
and existing informal settlements with a balanced focus on urban and
rural slums . . . We are convinced that without such an intervention, our
slum clearance programme will be an exercise of futility."

Mabuyakhulu also announced an increase in the housing subsidy this year
from R31 929 to R36 538.

Lennox Mabaso, spokesman for Mabuyakhulu, said the new Act would be
piloted and "it is likely to have an impact on other existing legislation.
People will no longer erect shacks and claim ownership of property
within 24 hours. It will put an end to 'Shark Farming'."

'death of freedom'

Five thousand people attended Durban's 'death of freedom' rally. The Mercury reports. Here's a quote all South Africans should remember, from S'bu Zikode, one of the leaders of the squatter organizing group Abahlali baseMjondolo:

"How can we celebrate freedom when we only hear tales of freedom or see people's lives changed for the better in other parts of the country, but never in our communities? We cannot celebrate, we have nothing to be cheerful about. We are the forgotten people who are expected to be content with sharing five toilets among 5 000 people. How can a community of 5 000 people celebrate when it is expected to make do with six [water] taps?"

In the past, Abahlali members have been brutally punished by police when they have attempted to exercise their right to public protest. This time, thankfully, everything apparently went off without a hitch.

housing projects for squatters

The administration in India's capital, says it will build 10,000 apartments in the next two years to replace the city's burgeoning shantytowns, Express India reports. Of course, this will not come close to keeping up with the city's projected population growth.

the human rights of corporations

Back in November, I blogged about a European Court of Human Rights decision that a successful adverse possession claim over some property had violated a corporation's 'human' rights. Now the case is being appealed to Europe's top rights panel. The Financial Times has a brief report.

at it again

Zimbabwe's still going after squatters, this time burning down a 200-family settlement in Masvingo city. ZWNEWS.com reports.

police state tactics against squatters

A politician in the South African Province of KwaZulu Natal is proposing a new law that has apartheid-era resonance: the "Prevention of the Re-emergence of Slums Act." It would make it a crime for squatters to seize unused land--and, undoubtedly, would require a new police force to patrol the areas where squatters might invade.

Such an act is based on a fundamental misconception of why shantytowns form. People don't live in crude shacks because they want to. They don't come to the city thinking, "Here's the future I'm looking forward to: I'll go to Durban and live in a mud or tin hut without water and electricity. That sounds great." They come to the city hoping desperately to find a job. And they move into shantytowns because there are no other options. No one builds housing they can afford.

Of course, some of the rhetoric about the proposal attempts to make it sound well-intentioned: The Act "would recognise the existing slums for upgrading and outlaw the erection of new slums," said Local Government, Traditional Affairs and Housing MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu. "We will never win the war on the eradication of slums if we do not vigorously maximise our housing options and prevent the erection of new slums....The envisaged act seeks to achieve this. We are convinced that without such an intervention our slum clearance programme will be an exercise in futility."

The bottom line, however, is this: criminalizing the erection of new squatter communities is a police-state ordinance not a housing policy.

Dharavi Deal Moves Forward

The math seems a bit skewed: the Mumbai government has knocked down 169,184 huts in Dharavi for redevelopment out of which 25,591 tenements have already been constructed." DNA (Daily News & Analysis) reports.

Water most expensive for city's poorest

"In one month I pay just about as a family that has access to tap water pays in a year," a Mexico City squatter tells El Universal. The profit that goes to the water dealers, so the article reports, amounts to 20 times the average minimum wage.

Shack blaze leaves 250 homeless

In South Africa: a fire in a Durban squatter community. What the article doesn't say: that the government's policy of preventing squatters from getting electrical hookups was what really caused the blaze. Squatters with electricity wouldn't be using candles.

squatters come up with own rehab plan

A visionary approach, led by squatters, to demolish their huts which were getting uncomfortably close to the runways of Mumbai's airport and create a new community right nearby. Many of the squatters work at the airport and feel commuting would be a great harm to their lives. Interestingly, the squatters are being advised by P.K. Das, an architect who is also a leader of Nivarra Hakk Suraksha Samiti, an aggressive pro-squatter agitating group. Mumbai Newsline reports.

unFreedom day

A dozen years on, it's time for irony, not celebration: April 27th in Durban, South Africa.

Abahlali BaseMjondolo, a terrific new squatter community organization, has joined with several tenant groups to lead a day of mourning for the new South Africa. As the groups explain in their press release:

The first democratic elections were held in South Africa on 27 April 1994. The promise of that day was equality, a vision that all South Africans might be able to share the country’s wealth, that all would be equal under the law, that all would have inalienable rights. That day is commemorated as "Freedom Day", and its memory celebrated in a national holiday each April 27th. As years have gone by, the hope has turned to bitter irony. Twelve years after the first democratic elections, the gap has increased between the rich and the poor!

What are we fighting for?
Decent Houses for All in the City
Free Basic Services
Basic Income Grant for All
Unconditional access to all resources of this land
Rights for All informal workers
A health, clean environment
Equality for All, including all vulnerable groups (women, children, sick/disabled).

What are we against?
Forced Relocations
Evictions
Water and Electricity Cut offs
Lying Politicians
Pollution
State Repression, police brutality and impunity
Land Theft

The unFreedom day festivities will begin at 12 noon at St. John’s church on Rippon Road in Claire Estate in Durban, S.A.

the demolition fascists

Nangla Machi, a self-built settlement of 40,000, was destroyed by the Delhi authorites a few weeks back. MidDay offers this moving response.

Probably over a third, perhaps more, of urban India is composed of slums, but they are everywhere regarded as non-city, an illegitimate, invalid parasite onto what a city should be, a stigma on our image.

Why are slums, so integral, so important and so economically useful to the city in its entirety always, everywhere regarded as being so not-city.

Are our conceptions of cities too idealised to accommodate its greatest reality? Do we view cities as being so non-village or non-poor that we don’t like the very idea, let alone the reality of how its poorest live?
...
They are in fact what our cities should be — hospitable, inventive, resilient and full of survivors and entrepreneurs. In order to save our cities we need to save our jhuggis. This is the slogan that greeted all visitors to Nangla Machi, the city that is no more.

The real estate deal called Dharavi

This says it all: "International players will start bidding for Dharavi." It's from an article in the Financial Express, which notes that 535 acres of land in Dharavi, Mumbai's largest squatter community, will be auctioned for a likely price of Rs 4,000 and Rs 7,000 per sq ft. (between $90 and $150 per square foot) Says one developer: "The land at Dharavi is flat and horizontal. Whenever such land is redeveloped, a lot of area is released for development of skyscrapers."

Sound like a squatter's worst nightmare.

Erdogan shows hypocrisy on gecekondu issue

Turkey's Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan, who is presiding over massive squatter demolition in Ankara, was himself a land invader in an Istanbul squatter community. That's the word from Mustafa Mutlu, a columnist for the newspaper Vatan, as translated by the Turkish Daily News.

Vatan's Mutlu examines Erdogan's latest condemnation of those who build and dwell in illegal gecekondus (shanties) this week. Speaking at the 6th Congress on Housing, Erdogan was quoted as saying: "And to those who try and raise sympathy for these people by saying, 'Those poor and miserable people had a house, and now it's been taken away from them,' I say how are these people poor and miserable by your account? This [gecekondus] is a racket. We are providing homes for YTL 200 monthly payments. Let them go and use these apartments." Mutlu notes that this is by no means Erdogan's first tongue-lashing of gecekondu owners and builders. He recalls words from Erdogan in October of 2004, when the premier announced that gecekondus in Ankara were to be razed to the ground.

Noting that he will stand by the veracity of these words by Erdogan, Mutlu goes on to highlight the particular hypocrisy contained in this stance, asking: "Who was the politician who built a gecekondu on forestland in Sultanbeyli? Does anyone remember? Yes, it was the prime minister himself." Mutlu then recalls a court case against Erdogan for illegally constructing a villa in Sultanbeyli in 1986. He also reminds readers about how Erdogan received a 10-month prison sentence for violating the Forest Law in 1990 but that the sentence was converted into a fine and in 1998 the entire episode was expunged from the record.

How the squatters won

It's a story bound to warm Hernando de Soto's heart: The Jamaica Gleaner reports on a Jamaican squatter community that resisted government-led eviction efforts and whose residents now have the title deeds to their lots.

But before you can say "the blessings of private property be upon you," note this: most residents are improving their homes with loans from the government's National Housing Trust, not with mortgages from private banks. This is not liberating dead capital, a la de Soto; it's a subsidy program. The same money could have been given to the same people when they were squatters--and their homes would have been improved sooner.

Even the smaller cities

One in four residents of Berhampur, a city of 290,000 people in just inland from the Bay of Bengal in India's Orissa state, is a squatter, according to this article from The Statesman. This may indicate a sea change in urbanization, as smaller cities, too, begin to grow at unprecedented rates.

more murambatsvina?

Word in Harare is that the city government will start knocking down the informal kiosks and homes people have built since last year's demolition drive. Thousands of families are living in 'holding camps' around the city after the massive uprooting of 800,000 people during last year's 'operation drive out trash.' By the end of this month, thousands more may be rendered homeless or jobless. The UN's IRIN News reports.

demolition, then a deal

Real estate types are the same all over the world. They use fear to get what they want.
Squatters on the beach in Fiji were resisting a tourist development on the land they occupied. They went to court for a stay of demolition while the facts were sorted out. But the developer didn't wait. He tore down a squatter's hut before the court had a chance to hear arguments. After witnessing the demolition, the squatters agreed to move, the Fiji Times reports.

A city of contrasts

Rocinha, the largest and most urbanized favela in Rio de Janeiro, is full of contrasts. In parts, it has the infrastructure and commercial development of the legal city. But far up the hill, some still live in wooden shacks with unpaved streets and no electricity. Viva Favela reports, in Portuguese.

A U.S. shantytown

Voice of San Diego offers a three-part look at a squatter communtiy of Mexican immigrants in Carmel Valley.

Here are two eye-catching quotes:

Over the past few years, the men have been squeezed further and further into the valley. Now, they are cornered. The small patch of land where they currently live is bounded to the east and the south by protected city parkland, to the north by a freeway and development, and to the west by land they have already been evicted from.

Inside the camps, about 200 people -- nobody knows for sure how many -- are living in conditions that can only be described as Third World. The migrants have no running water, no electricity and no permanent structures to shelter under. They wash their bodies and their clothes in the same sulfur-yellow stream that carries the run-off of farms and houses down the valley. Most simply go to the bathroom behind the nearest bush.

..............

Migrants have lived in their shanty town of cobbled-together shacks in Carmel Valley for more than two decades. Bathing in a nearby stream and surviving on the fringes of one of the world's most affluent societies, the men have carved an existence by working on nearby farms, laboring on construction sites and working illicitly for private homeowners.

The men have been a vital cog in San Diego's economy for a long time. For decades, barely a strawberry or tomato has been picked in the county that has not been touched at one point by the hands of an undocumented migrant. Few of the vast swathes of new homes that stretch from the ocean to the desert were not built or beautified in some way by the workmanship of these men.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

"We do not want their help or money, we want a solution to our problem."

That's what a Delhi squatter whose home was destroyed in a fire that claimed 1,500 shanties in the Indian capital's Yamuna Pushta area tells the Indo Asian News Service (via Qatar's Gulf Times.) After a fire last year, squatters were given $100 and told to fend for themselves. Now the squatters want a permanent solution.

$1 per square foot

The island nation of Dominica plans to sell land to squatters in 25 communities for EC$1 per square foot, according to this article from Caribbean Net News. That's about 30 to 80 percent off market land prices, the news service reports. The government is waiving any additional fees and the squatters will have two or three months to ante up.

As I remarked in a previous post, this still may be too expensive for many squatters.

I hope Caribbean Net News or some other paper actually goes and interviews squatters to determine if the price is right.

Let's hope

Kenya President Mwai Kibaki reports that the country will spend Sh880 billion (or approximately $11 billion U.S.) on upgrading shantytowns. But what is upgrading? "Improving accessibility to basic services such as shelter, water, education, health, security and income generating activities" can mean all sorts of things.

The Kibera upgrading has been talked about for years. I'd like to know specifically what Kibaki's government is doing. Let's hope its doing something constructive.

Rocinha & Vidigal to be legalized!

15,000 families will get titles to their homes in Rocinha and Vidigal under a new plan announced by the Brazilian government, O Globo reports (in Portuguese.)

Raquel Rolnik, of the Ministry of Cities, reports that a legal survey is already in the works for 1,800 families in Parque Royal, and that all-told, 22,000 families in Rio's favelas will get legal titles. After the city does an official survey, people in the community will have the right, collectively or individually, to file for usucapiao -- usucapio in English -- which essentially converts possession into the legal title to property.

A related article notes the difficulties involved in putting usucapiao to work. These can include problems describing the urban fabric (for instance when someone has built their house on the roof of a friend's house) and legal difficulties involving the various claimants and heirs of disputed pieces of property. And another sidebar discusses the delays in providing titles to Ladeira dos Funcionarios, a small favela in the northern Rio neighborhood of Caju. This favela has long been organized and urbanized. I visited Ladeira dos Funcionarios in 1999 and found it to be a well-organized community. The residents assocation had already passed a height limit on newly constructed buildings and was seriously considering a moratorium on all new construction to prevent overdevelopment. Yet, despite strong organizing efforts, it has been almost three years since they were promised title deeds and fewer than 1/4 of the residents have actually received them. (note: you may be required to register for globo's site to read these articles.)

Thanks to Alex for writing me about this. Memo to Alex and all who speaks Portuguese better than I do: feel free to correct any mistakes I have made or to translate more of the details from these articles. And Rocinha residents: do you know anything about this? Keep us up to date!

Kyrgyzstan squatters

Land seizures are on the way in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. This report from the Benjamin Banneker Center for Economic Justice and Progress details how, in the difficult post-Soviet environment, "between 200,000 and 300,000 people made it to the outskirts of the capital and quickly built improvised houses. Some 15 years on, many of these huts stand without fences, with plastic bags for windows, garbage flying around freely. Most do not have basic conveniences such as electricity, water or rubbish collection."

Sounds familiar.

Mumbai's land mafia

This report, from the 24-hour news channel NDTV shows how squatters are forced to pay off politicians and their cronies to get a foothold in the city. Here are some chilling words: "occasional demolitions make it easier for slumlords to make a profit."

demolition in Istanbul

Police sprayed tear gas and used water cannons against against squatters in the Sariyer/Derbent neighborhoods, Hurriyet reports. This is interesting, as Sariyer is a reasonably well-off neighborhood, and not the kind of far-flung area where squatters normally thrive.

Young slaves of Mumbai

Hidden in the squatter communities of Mumbai: workshops that depend on the slave labor of thousands of children. The Indian newsweekly Frontline reports.

One every second

That's the number of people moving to squatter communities in the world's cities, according to this piece by Jennifer Rowell, the urban adviser for Care International, in The Guardian. It's a shocking statistic (though I've done the math, and it's actually too low: the reality is that 2 people become squatters every second.) Rowell writes: "People in many slums are treated as though they have no rights to education, to clean water or to fight eviction. But those rights are theirs. And, as their numbers grow, so too does the need for urgent solutions." I'd second that, with this proviso: the people themselves are the root of the solution.

Rowell's piece was a response to a heartfelt piece on urbanization in China, which you can read here.

[thanks to Edesio for the link]

Absolutely!

A UN official has endorsed secure land rights for squatters in Africa. "For the majority of our people, land is vital for survival," Abdoulieh Janneh, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa said in a speech at the opening of a four-day workshop on 'Land Policy in Africa.' "Therefore, a meaningful structural economic transformation that results in employment and improved living standards for the majority of Africans will partly depend on securing land rights to millions of our people."

Demolition drive relaunched in Mumbai

Twenty-four hour TV new channel NDTV reports that the state government is again demolishing home in India's commercial capital. This is simply unconscionable. The city must respect squatters -- and that means, at the very least, not engaging in summary demolition and, instead, working with squatters to come up with alternate plans. Even the reporter understood: "Clearly, the problem of encroachments in the long run requires a much deeper solution."

Where are the leaders?

One Small Project

Archinect offers a terrific interview with Ball State U Architecture professor Wes Janz.

The leftover is a potent category; synonyms include waste, debris, rubbish, as well as surviving, unconsumed, and outstanding. Someone or something typically seen as worthless can be understood simultaneously to be worthwhile.

I like this shifted perspective. Is a "slum" a place of poverty and pain, as well as a place of vibrancy and life? What will the self-builder teach me, an architect? Am I the homeless one? Have I lost my way?

Now, I’m working bottom-up, one person and one small project at a time, taking seriously the displaced family, the claimed space, the scavenged brick. It’s the cascading energies of small responses and helping moments that interest me.

For more on Wes Janz and his approach to development, visit his group site: One Small Project.

rip off

Hundreds of squatters in Berhampur, India were chiseled out of their meager savings by unscrupulous operators who promised them a chance at 'free' land--for a fee. Read all about it in The Statesman.

I saw a similar cheat take place in Kenya -- where people handed over large amounts of money to be assured a place in a United Nations-backed redevelopment plan. It was, of course, pure thievery.

These kinds of things happen in areas where governments are corrupt and ward bosses regularly take money. When corruption is the norm, people are more apt to believe that these criminal 'pay to play' schemes are legit.

Gentrification in Istanbul

After a ban on foreign ownership was lifted, the price of property in Turkey's largest city jumped 85 percent last year. This year prices are predicted to almost double again, according to this Reuters article . And here's something that ought to concern all gecekondu residents: "potential redevelopments of Istanbul's shantytowns and earthquake-vulnerable buildings could also fuel growth."

Redevelopment is one of those great real estate code words. It means eviction and replacement with high priced housing.

a pretty good trick

Sixty squatters are studying at Cape Town's College of Magic, the International Herald Tribune reports.

In another South African news story, squatters in Durban have sued after their homes were bulldozed by a private developer.

Police torch 1,200 squatter homes

In Kenya, police are moving against squatters who have built their homes on the margins of national parks and forests. The East African Standard (via allafrica.com) has the details.

Displacement fears

Squatters in Ahmedabad say a riverfront development project, intended to beautify the city, will destroy their homes and livelihoods, Express India reports.

"We have been living here since before the country got its independence," squatter leader Mohan Bundela told the news agency, adding that luxury development in the area came long after the squatters had taken the riverbanks. "Leaders and politicians want us here for their votebanks. But we are not supposed to seek proper relief and rehabilitation. This has to change,"

score one for Rhino

The squatters of Rhino can sleep easier now, as the Federal Tribunal rejected the landlord's argument for a provisional eviction. Swissinfo reports (in French.)

misery loves company

Squatters aren't the only ones living without water, sewers and electricity. In Nairobi, the Inter Press Service reports, middle class housing is going up all around town without any infrastructure at all. "Developers are erecting buildings before authorities have laid on certain basic infrastructure," the news service says. "Besides an absence of piped water and electricity, there are no access roads; developers simply create their own - while finding ways of tapping water and electricity from miles away."

It seems that true power lies in the hands of the real estate developers.

Shootout in Rio favela

Less than a week after the army occupied the city's favelas, a gunfight between the cops and bandidos in a Rio squatter community leaves eight dead, BBC NEWS reports.

Delhi squatters protest demolition

It's about time: Thousands of Delhi squatters take to the streets to protest demolition. "I have been living in my house for the past 30 years and now the authorities have asked me to vacate the place," a fruit vendor told NewKerala.com.

Squatters say they account for 2/3 of the city's population--and in a democracy, that ought to give them some power. India is a democracy, isn't it?

City Vision

After the elections at the beginning of this month, the Democratic Alliance outmaneuvered the African National Congress to take control of Cape Town's City Hall. This letter to a South African news agency tells why:

the ANC has failed to deliver on its promises....You cannot ask people after many years of struggle and ten years of freedom what needs to be done.
The issue now is doing it.
In Cape Town we want land, we do not have land.
We want decent houses or flats and not just toilets and shacks.
We want to stay around Cape Town, not in marginalized squatter camps anymore. We want free education, jobs and grants for unemployed people, grants for all sick people and children under 18 years. People want a fighting government that is committed to redistribution of wealth and not just promises about economic development.
Economic development is a liberal theory which serve the interests of the very same white people who stole our wealth.

These are words local governments in every mega-city in the developing world should take to heart.

latest favela chic: classical music

Now planned for Heliopolis, a Sao Paulo favela: a $6.6 million classical music center. As a former French Horn player, I'm all for music training. But I wonder whether a massive investment like this is the way forward. In tandem, there should be some concrete benefits for all Heliopolis residents.

Perhaps sewers, water, legal electricity would be good ideas. The community should organize to demand these things in concert with the new concert facility.

Former soldiers confess to stealing weapons

The skinny from Rio: two ex-soldiers confess that they helped steal 11 guns from a military depot. They told authorities they were working with some drug traffickers from the notorious Complexo do Alemao favela. But here's an odd detail: ten days after the theft, the guns were rusty. Sounds like a comedy of errors to me. The traffickers have lots of guns. They don't need eleven more. And if they did need them, they wouldn't let them rust. The details just don't add up.

Treating More Than Just HIV/Aids

The UN's IRIN News Service offers a peek at AIDS treatment and counselling in Kibera. I hope this story is not just wishful thinking, because when I was in Kibera, there was an incredible amount of stigma regarding AIDS. I urged a good friend of mine to get tested after his cousin died of AIDS. He refused, saying that he did not want to become "a walking coffin."

"We have come to take your souls"

There's a local arms race in Rio de Janeiro.

"Imagine an official armored vehicle, emblazoned with a skull and a sword, with police who come in shooting – first at the streetlights, then at the neighbourhood’s residents… this is the caveirão. An eleven-year-old boy had his head torn off his body by shots which came from the caveirão – and we, the residents, still have to prove that it was the police."

That's a resident of Rio's Caju community, quoted in Amnesty International's report trashing Brazilian authorities for using caveirões--armored vans turned into military assault vehicles (the word itself means 'big skulls')--in their operations in the densely populated favelas.

Amnesty says that the use of caveirões is creating an arms race, which ratchets up the violence in the favelas: "In response to the caveirão, drug gangs have reportedly been buying sophisticated grenade launchers and high-powered rifles to penetrate the caveirão’s armor.

In a related story, here's the latest on the guns stolen from the military and recovered after an armed siege of several favelas: two soldiers have confessed that the heist was an inside job. Note, though, that the guns were not found in a favela, but rather in the woods off a road in ritzy Sao Conrado.

my god martha, they're stealing electricity!

One of the sad facts of life as a squatter is that it's extremely difficult to get legal electrical service. Though this BBC NEWS article begins by pointing the finger at squatters in India's capital, a power company official says that the firm actually loses more money from middle class Delhi residents who tamper with their meters that it does from unauthorized squatter hook-ups.

I applaud Tata power for offering a flat rate for squatters to be able to get legal electricity, but 179 rupees a month is expensive for many squatters, particularly if it will only power a light bulb and a fan. I knew Mumbai squatters who worked two jobs and earned as little as 800 rupees a month. How can that family justify paying more than 20% of their income for electricity?

favela farce

The Brazilian army ended its siege of 10 favelas without having recovered 11 guns that sparked the massive military incursion into several Rio de Janeiro squatter communities, The Independent reports. (See also: Reuters and the Associated Press.)

As I have noted before, the fact that the drug gangs get their weapons from the military has been well-known for years. As I report in my book, a military policeman with decades of experience in the favelas, told me that his squad routinely seizes crates of brand new weapons--assault rifles, grenades, handguns, etc.--that have come straight from the military.

It's also true that 99 percent of favela residents are not involved in the drug trade. Still, they prefer the traffickers to the cops or the army because the drug dealers are communitarian and invest in their hillside neighborhoods. I'm sure that the celebrations as the army pulled out involved more than jubilant drug dealers.

Now that the tense confrontation is over, here's a question I'd like the Brazilian media to answer. With all the guns that have been commandeered by the drug gangs over the years, why did the military suddenly go crazy over 11 guns that were stolen ten days ro so ago? There's got to be more to the story.

Great idea, one caveat

The government of the island paradise of Domenica has promised that it will sell land to squatters for 37 cents a square foot. "Every Dominican will have a piece of Dominica," vowed Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit.

Terrific! My one caveat: with 30 percent of its people living in poverty and 23 percent unemployment, even that discounted rate might be prohibitively expensive for the average squatter.

Shantytowns as a New Suburban Ideal

New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff meets Teddy Cruz, an architect who thinks of Tijuana's shantytowns as a new suburban ideal.

Here's a representative quote

As Tijuana has expanded into the hilly terrain to the east, squatters have fashioned an elaborate system of retaining walls out of used tires packed with earth. The houses jostling on the incline are constructed out of concrete blocks, sheets of corrugated metal, used garage doors and discarded packing crates — much of it brought down by local contractors and wholesalers from across the border.

Once such a settlement is completed, it is protected from demolition under Mexican law — and the government is eventually obliged to provide plumbing, electricity and roads to serve it. In Mr. Cruz's view, the process is in some ways a far more flexible and democratic form of urban development than is the norm elsewhere.

Absolutely!

search for stolen guns

With checkpoints on Rio de Janeiro's highways and a stormtrooper presence in nine favelas, Brazil's army pressed its search for eleven guns stolen from a local army depot, the Associated Press reports.

But, as the article notes, this "massive sweep to recover a handful of weapons" is, to put it mildly, "unusual" and, despite the presence of 1,500 troops, the army has yet to find any of the stolen guns.

That the traficantes have serious weaponry--often stolen from the armed forces--is nothing new. It has been known for years. The question is, why all the fuss now, particularly over ten assault rifles and a 9mm pistol?

Why isn't the army looking inside itself? The thieves were dressed in army regulation camouflage uniforms. How did they get them? And they apparently moved in and out of the arms depot with ease. How did that happen?

Given that the military is looking in favelas controlled by the Comando Vermelho, including Morro do Providencia and Mangueira, this would lend credence to rumors that the authorities actually favor a rival drug gang called Amigos dos Amigos.

So far, one teenager has been gunned down, caught in the crossfire between the army and the drug dealers at Morro do Providencia, not far from Rio's famed central railway station.

with organizing, the future is now

Thirty-two squatter communities in Pune (outside Bombay) have gained a degree of legitimacy by organizing. Now they have a public budget and can avoid the petty corruption of local officials. Express India has the details in this brief story.

soldiers search favelas for lost weapons

The Brazilian military has sent 1,500 soldiers into Rio's favelas to search for a dozen weapons that were stolen late last week. Bloomberg has details. There's something strange here. At the same time that people in the favelas are opening hotels catering to tourists (see previous post), the news is full of shootouts between Brazil's drug gangs.

So Mangueira is barricaded in. Morro do Providencia is full of unrest. The army is using armored personnel carriers against Brazilian citizens. An ugly, ugly scene. As one cop confessed to me, the army is in on the arms trade and the drug trade. So all of this is perhaps a charade.

asfaltização, 2

Now it's a home in Chapeu Mangueira, on the hill overlooking Leme and Copacabana Beach, that has been transformed into a hotel. The Guardian reports.

Check out the price: £13.40 a night. That's about $23. Sure it's cheaper than Copacabana. That means that renting one room for a week, this family would earn more than my landlord in Rocinha charged me for a whole apartment for a month.

Perhaps it's inevitable but there is a risk to this profiteering--that it will ultimately make the community less affordable.

a different conception of property rights

You might not expect a real estate article in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine to offer much of interest about different conceptions of property rights around the world. But Steve Hendrix's entertaining piece on how he became the owner of a seaside villa in Guatemala offers some items that might make people rethink their fiendish devotion to the right of property in land.

Forget the colonialist implications (he's aware of them) and revel in the joys of customary ownership:

It is, as it turns out, illegal for foreigners to own waterfront property in Guatemala. Armand [who functioned as his real estate agent] said not to worry. "It is an old law," he said. It came out "Eeet eeeze zan old law" in his beguiling Grenoble accent. The regulation traditionally has had more to do with coastal defense than with lakeside properties.

We also would not get a deed to the land, or any of the other ironclad niceties that are such a comfort to American property owners and their nervous-Nellie bankers. The land would remain officially "owned" by the local village; we would get something called a "transferable right of possession." Land title reform is just beginning in Guatemala. Armand said not to worry. "Here it is normal," he said. "It is a small village. Everybody will know it is your property."
....

In the United States, a modern real estate transaction contains within it every transaction that ever went before -- and went wrong. Every lead-paint lawsuit, disputed deed and property-line catfight is reflected in the hours of certificates, waivers and addenda you are forced to sign at the closing table. There are dozens of them, culminating in the ultimate litigious absurdity, the form that pledges you to come back and sign any forms they may have forgotten to give you. The overwhelming emotion of new homeowners in America is writer's cramp.

Not so in Guatemala. The contract that indentured us to a tiny piece of Latin America came as a single Word attachment and was about four pages long, double-spaced. We couldn't read it, of course, but we ran it through a free Internet translation engine and assured ourselves that our names were spelled correctly. Otherwise, it remained gibberish. ("Both comparacientes declare, one after the other that in the terms briefed in this writing the obligations accept for himself that of the same one are derived.")

invisible to the decision-makers

The Voice of San Diego shows how degraded conditions in the colonias of Tijuana are directly related to environmental degradation there and miles away in San Diego. A welcome change: the environmentalists working on cross-border issues do their best not to blame the residents.

the right way to relocate squatters

The Venezuelan government is taking an active role in relocating squatters who live in areas where landslides are a risk, the Daily Journal reports. Though replacement housing may not be available right away, at least the government is working with people to provide a mechanism for getting them out of homes in gullies and other areas that will likely wash out in rainstorms. In 1999, 50,000 people may have died in a round of terrible landslides on the outskirts of Caracas.

when the dump is the key to life

Picking through the refuse of Manila's garbage dumps is an industry that employs 150,000 people, most of them squatters.

Gangs fight for Brazilian slum

KnightRidder reports something contrary to what my Rocinha friends say. In previous posts, Rocinha residents said that the six people who died in the Comando Vermelho invasion were all bandidos--the bad guys. This article suggests that five were simply innocents caught in the crossfire.

Could my Rocinha readers please respond?

And here's something revealing: "The day of the shootout, hundreds of state police officers responsible for patrolling slums such as Rocinha were at a pre-Carnaval beach barbecue about an hour away. Law enforcement officials admitted days later that they'd received tips about the planned invasion but had been unable to prevent the fighting, even though the invaders had crossed much of the city in a heavily armed convoy of vans from another slum above the tourist-packed neighborhood of Copacabana."

In other words, the cops didn't want to intervene, which only serves to fuel people's suspicions that the cops are on the take from the drug gangs and thus are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Rio readers: let me know what's going on.

asfaltização

An enterprising Rio de Janeiro favela resident has created a hotel in Pereira da Silva, a favela that is above Rua Pereira da Silva in the the middle class neighborhood of Laranjeiras, according to this Reuters report.

While this may bring money to the favela, it's part of a process that favela dwellers call asfaltização--the asphalt world coming to the informal world of the favelas. It's the favela version of gentrification--and some feel that it does not bode well for the future of the favelas. After all, if five people stay at the hotel for $15 a night, it would only take two nights for the hotel owner to earn more than what my landlord in Rocinha charged for a whole month.

I'm not against individual gain, but given that math, it may be tough for favelados to keep their homes.

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: Portrait of a Shantytown

A somewhat overdone portrait of Kibera, from Inter Press Service News offers the view of one family. Still, it's a rather privileged example: if Paul Opiyo truly earns $20 a day at his job, that would be ten times more than many Kibera residents earn. The descriptions are a bit over the top (Kibera does not stink from the moment you walk into the community) but there's much here that's shockingly accurate.

The article ignores the potential power in incrementalism. If, as it notes at the end, residents are skeptical of all the NGOs because they haven't made a damn bit of difference in the community, it's also because those groups concentrate on these big ideas like upgrading. A single paved road in Kibera would save dozens of lives because ambulances and emergency vehicles could get into the community (today, if you're sick, you have to be hauled out of the community in a wheelbarrow). Laying city water pipes, even in one part of the community, would mark a huge improvement in people's lives. Going in and doing an official and totally transparent analysis of structure ownership would reveal the network of payoffs and corruption that allow the shantytown to flourish and permit rich people to own the mud huts and rent them to Kibera residents for a massive profit. For instance, I know for a fact that an official of the federal justice ministry owned a number of huts in Kibera, and was busily involved in evicting people who were not from his tribe and gauging tenants for too much in rent. That man simply ought to be given this choice: 'give the huts to their residents or you will be fired.' What he is doing is incompatible with justice.

How?

UN-Habitat chief Anna Tibaijuka reveals that her agency is changing its focus from improving conditions in slums to preventing them altogether. Scoop has the scoop. It's a worthy goal. But how? Master planning (which essentially involves criminalizing any deviations from the plans) simply shunts poor people to less valuable turf. Perhaps the world has to confront a tremendous fiction we've all come to accept: the idea that there's actually something called a housing market, fueled and regulated by supply and demand.

a different view of the police

Kibera residents in danger of losing scarce open space for a police substation take to the mud streets. The East African Standard reports.