Future Policies to Avoid the “Clouding” of Decades of Property Title Regularization Programs: Towards UN-Habitat III

• In Event: Housing & Urban Development Imperatives: Towards HABITAT III 2016

Abstract

Since the 1980s most countries in Latin America have embarked upon title regularization programs to provide clean title to squatters low-income self-builders who acquired land informally from the 1960s onwards. Programs vary in the breadth, depth and period of policy development and implementation. However, two or three decades later many of these programs are threatened by a reversion to informality and “tangled” or “clouded” title as pioneer owners age and pass away intestate, and as a result, their property titles become confused and contested among beneficiaries (usually adult children). The new constraint upon clear title and ownership impacts negatively upon the ability to sell the property and liberate the asset value in the market place, and for those second and third generations who continue to enjoy the use value of the parental home, there are few incentives to upgrade or engage in dwelling and lot rehabilitation. Moreover, where grants of financing are linked to clean title, then those that inherit without clean title are likely to be excluded. New policy approaches from Mexico and from similar settlements in Texas (colonias) will be presented as a way to minimize title tangling, and to ensure continuity in property ownership among low income households.

Author

• Peter M Ward, University of Texas/Austin