Squatter

SQUATTER

"Slums" are highly congested urban areas marked by deteriorated, unsanitary buildings, poverty, and social disorganization.

"Squatters" settle on land, especially public or unoccupied land, without right or title. Squatters include those who settles on public land under regulation by the government, in order to get title to it.

Simply out, slums refer to the environmental aspects of the area where a community resides, while squatters refer to the legality of the land ownership and other infrastructure provision.

.Definition of a Squatter Settlement:

A squatter settlement therefore, can be defined as a residential area which has developed without legal claims to the land and/or permission from the concerned authorities to build; as a result of their illegal or semi-legal status, infrastructure and services are usually inadequate. There are essentially three defining characteristics that helps us understand squatter settlement: the Physical, the Social and the legal with the reasons behind them being interrelated.

Physical Characteristics:

A squatter settlement, due to its inherent "non-legal" status, has services and infrastructure below the "adequate" or minimum levels. Such services are both network and social infrastructure, like water supply, sanitation, electricity, roads and drainage; schools, health centres, market places etc. Water supply, for example, to individual households may be absent, or a few public or community stand pipes may have been provided, using either the city networks, or a hand pump itself. Informal networks for the supply of water may also be in place. Similar arrangements may be made for electricity, drainage, toilet facilities etc. with little dependence on public authorities or formal channels.

Social Characteristics:

Most squatter settlement households belong to the lower income group, either working as wage labour or in various informal sector enterprises. On an average, most earn wages at or near the minimum wage level. But household income levels can also be high due to may income earners and part-time jobs. Squatters are predominantly migrants, either rural-urban or urban-urban. But many are also second or third generation squatters.

Legal Characteristics:

The key characteristic that delineates a squatter settlement is its lack of ownership of the land parcel on which they have built their house. These could be vacant government or public land, or marginal land parcels like railway setbacks or "undesirable" marshy land. Thus when the land is not under "productive" use by the owner, it is appropriated by a squatter for building a house. It has to be noted here that in many parts of Asia, a land owner may "rent" out his land for a nominal fee to a family or families, with an informal or quasi-legal arrangement, which is not however valid under law.

Other names

Bastee, Juggi-johmpri = India

Informal settlements ,Low-income settlements, Semi-permanent settlements, Shanty towns, Spontaneous settlements, Unauthorized settlements, Unplanned settlements , Uncontrolled settlements

The Development Process of a Squatter Settlement

The key question to be asked here is why do people squat? There are two reasons for this: one is internal to the squatter, and the other is external. Internal reasons include, lack of collateral assets; lack of savings and other financial assets; daily wage/low-income jobs (which in many cases are semi-permanent or temporary). External reasons include, high cost of land and other housing services; apathy and anti-pathy on the part of the government to assist them; high "acceptable" building standards and rules and regulations; lopsided planning and zoning legislation.

Future Role of Squatter Settlements in Urban Housing.

Squatter settlements in urban areas are an inevitable phenomena. As long as urban areas offer economies of scale and agglomeration economies, large cities will always continue to grow attracting migrants from rural and smaller urban areas, leading to more squatting. There is no universal "quick-fix" solution that can solve all the problems of squatting in all parts of the developing world. Considering the inevitability of squatting, the need is primarily for a change in attitude towards squatting, squatters and squatter settlements. One such approach that has been receiving considerable attention from various government and public authorities has been the "enabling" approach, where instead of taking a confrontationist attitude, governments have strived to create an enabling environment, under which people, using and generating their own resources, could find unique local solutions for their housing and shelter problems.