| A Private Sector View on Squatting
Presented 20th November – Symposium on Squatter
Management – Hyatt Regency
Published Thursday 27th November, 2008
This is an
extremely critical issue in the development of our country, touching on
important areas such as rural/urban migration, poverty,
homelessness/landlessness, housing policy, national land-use planning
and regional immigration. Of course, at the centre of all this, there
are the potent issues of equity and justice in our post-colonial
society.
Open collaboration
is the only fruitful way to approach these issues of planning and
national development.
Some key points to
consider:
Land availability
issues
A 1997 review of
State housing policy by Linda Hewitt states that 57 per cent of our land
mass is natural and secondary forest and swamplands, while 34 per cent
is either under agricultural cultivation or reserved for that use. That
leaves a mere nine per cent for the demands of today and tomorrow’s
society. Those uses include roads, schools, recreational facilities,
business-places, homes and so on. Even without the issue of squatting,
we have to contend with real pressures on a very limited land supply.
The State is by
far the largest landowner in the country and that has deep implications.
It is difficult to be sure, but when one includes Forest Reserve,
Caroni, Petrotrin and other State-owned estates, it is probably in
excess of 60 per cent of the country’s land area that is publicly-owned.
Land management
The absence of
proper and diligent land management has led to the perception that State
land can be targeted for squatting without serious consequences. As
always, it depends on who you ask, since for the family who have built
their home on State land without permission—the people we call
squatters—they have generally had an easier time with less challenges
than those who did the same on private lands.
The State land
management function is poorly-operated and that means that many of these
occupiers are not detected for a considerable time. When one joins that
up with the decided lack of political will to tackle this issue of
illegal occupation, it is no surprise that State lands are targeted in
this fashion.
Planning policy
Given the
ambitious plans of both the State and private players, it is clear that
many of the boundaries between agricultural and residential, residential
and commercial as land uses will be tested to destruction. The
re-definition of these land uses and their extents will be an ongoing
exercise, which must be done collaboratively if there is to be any
chance of orderly development.
Proper land use
planning and enforcement must be a central part of the process of
national development. It is not at all acceptable for this ministry to
be preparing a draft national land-use plan to be released for
discussion in two years’ time. That would be after the virtually
complete reconstruction of our capital, the commencement of construction
of the Rapid Rail System and the commencement of coastal water taxi
services, just to name a few major development programmes. We cannot
allow planning to become an after thought. That is not acceptable.
The housing policy
The State has
embarked on an ambitious policy of building 100,000 new homes in the
decade 2003-2012. The latest figures gave a total of about 30,000 as the
number of new homes built under that programme. We are at about the
half-way point in the programme and the output of new homes is
significantly less than the original target.
Apart from the
shortfall in terms of gross output of new homes, it is my view that the
housing programme is in deficit in yet another significant area ie the
persons to whom these new homes are allocated.
I am critical of
the housing allocation policy since it seems to cater more for those who
can qualify for a mortgage and purchase their homes, with little, if
anything, left over for those in the greatest housing need. In my view,
that allocation policy is inequitable and represents, in economic terms,
a severe mis-allocation of public resources. If neither the private
sector nor the State will cater for the needs of the poorest households,
there are being almost driven to illegal occupation.
I was pleased to
note that the first public statement of the newly-elected Minister of
this Super-Ministry, published on December 18 last year, was to announce
a complete revision of that housing allocation policy, saying that there
was “a cloud hanging over it.” I could not agree more. Of course, we
must await the new housing allocation policy before we can assess the
extent to which it could help those in greatest need.
The other public
players
Another potent
issue is that these communities are routinely provided with utilities by
the publicly-owned companies such as the T&T Electricity Commission
(T&TEC), the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and Telecommunications
Services of T&T (TSTT). Surely there needs to be some greater
co-ordination between those utility agencies and land-owners, especially
the State.
Other impacts and
implications
At the beginning,
I spoke of “squatting without serious consequences” and went on to point
out that that depended on who you asked. Just one example is necessary:
the proposed rapid rail. The large-scale, unregulated occupation of the
TGR (Trinidad Government Railway) lands on the north to south routes
have made that “strategic corridor” virtually off-limits to the
designers of the new rapid rail system. There is also more general
planning deficit here since there are at least two significant examples
of excisions from the TGR lands done with the knowledge and consent of
the relevant state agencies. The original corridor has been shut by both
illegal occupiers and a sobering lack of strategy on the part of
responsible state agencies. The serious consequence in this case being
that we have to seek a new corridor to traverse north to south with
increased costs due to the delays and expense of the land acquisition
process.
The private issues
The private sector
experience is markedly different from the public sector one, since there
is a general perception that state lands are better to squat on. That
perception has arisen since the actions to eject squatters has been far
less vigorous on the part of the State. But the issue of squatting has a
serious impact on private landlords as well as the State. Even if the
presence of squatters on private land is only marginal in terms of the
actual area occupied, the impact can be disproportionate and adverse.
That is because the occupiers will take over the flatter, better-drained
and more advantageously-positioned parts of your land. The end result
can be that a considerable estate can be compromised by marginal
occupiers if all the better parts are occupied.
The private sector
also has potent land management issues, with significant numbers of the
private estates in the country being owned by overseas landlords with
unreliable or no estate managers. The point being that it takes more
than safekeeping of deeds and survey plans to manage land holdings. The
preferred approach to dealing with illegal occupiers is for our clients
to offer them title for the cost of the subdivision survey and a
fraction of the market value of the land.
This is a shorter
version of a paper delivered on November 20, at the Ministry of
Planning, Housing and Environment—Symposium on Squatter Management 2008,
“Managing Squatter Settlements: Towards Sustainable Development” held on
November 19 to 20 at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad hotel, 1 Dock Road,
Port-of-Spain.
Afra Raymond is a chartered surveyor and a director of Raymond & Pierre
Ltd. Feedback can be sent to afra@raymondandpierre.com. |
