Slum upgrading Facility SUF
Slum upgrading Facility SUF is a technical cooporation aim to tedt and develop new financial instruments and methods for expanding private sector finance and public sector involvement in slum upgrading on a large scale.
This working paper aims to bring together the expertise of two different disciplines: land and financial services for the poor
The challenges of conventional housing finance and the poor
Macro-economic factors
Housing characteristics
Underwriting or Risk Management Practice
The main areas of innovation in reaching the poor include:
Recognition of progressive or incremental building practice.
Acceptance of more appropriate building/planning standards
Legal evidence of land ownership is not required
Group lending
Second, there is an important distinction between ‘land ownership’ and ‘land use
Third, there are many different types of rights in land
Fourth, a system of land tenure defines who has what rights over a piece of land
Finally, security of tenure refers to the confidence one has that their land rights will be respected.
understanding land issues at country level
There are five important elements to understanding the land situation of any country: the country context; the range of land rights that exist; the operation of the land market; the institutional landscape; and finally, the quality of land governance.
Tenure Systems and their Characteristics
Types of Land Registration Systems
Deeds registration system records the documents of transfer
Title registration system
Private conveyancing system
Thailand uses Title System (German, English, Torrens)
Land-based Strategies for Slum Upgrading
- Land Sharing
- Land Readjustment
- Regularization; granting of legal land rights to informal settlement occupants
- Simplified land-use and planning regulations
- Improved land valuation and taxation
Slum Upgrading Facility experiences from a land finance perspective
Indonesia
- (individual freehold with contracted limits for re-sale)
- Municipality has arranged for the transfer of the land through individual titles to the 44 low-income households that occupy the houses. Unlike the Karatonan case, the titles were issued before a compromise was agreed to equally share the land, making compromise on the distribution of the land impossible.
- Granted freehold land without land consolidation.
The following range of land rights have been encountered in Slum Upgrading Facility project work:
- Adverse Possession: In some cases people may have lived as squatters for many years, and their right to occupy the land in question may never have been challenged
- Rental: renters make up a significant proportion of the communities in which SUF is active
- Customary/Traditional/Religious Tenure: In Ghana, the chiefs have been responsible
Traditionally for land management on behalf of the entire community
- Collective/Cooperative Tenure: land that is held under co-operative law
Lessons-learned from the SUF experience
- Formal land delivery mechanisms fail to meet the needs of the poor
- Recognizing land rights can leverage investments from both individuals and institutions
- Land transactions are complex; Slum Upgrading Facility needs a strong pipeline of projects
- Accurate, up-to-date and accessible information is necessary to underpin slum upgrading projects
- Scalable solutions require the development of city level policies and strategies for slum upgrading
- A multi-stakeholder approach enhances options for sustainable land development
- Learning and sharing knowledge is crucial for change
- Decentralization: local government can add and obtain significant value through slum upgrading strategies
- Appropriate land use zoning, plot sizes, and building standards are critical to ensuring land development that is affordable to urban low income settlements
- In some contexts the urban poor need support to purchase land
- It is important to address the needs of renters
- There is a need to develop the capacity and systems for collective ownership and management
- Strong intermediary organisations are crucial in bridging informal and formal land markets in order to access finance for development
- Savings and loan systems provide a means to access commercial capital for land development
- Make land allocation and development gender-sensitive in slum upgrading schemes
BU3 Field Trip Reading Analyses 