Empowering the poor through property rights

This paper describes, contextualises and analyses the experience of the Bento Rubião Foundation in relation to its right to land project.

As part of this project, the Foundation assists low-income groups in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro to gain access, permanence and regularisation of the urban land that they occupy. The project also involves the provision of legal and social advice to groups who are either homeless, under threat of eviction, or eligible for land tenure regularisation. The project has covered nearly 15,000 households to date.

Based on the Foundations experience the author says that unequal and restrictive societies have ‘pushed’ the poorest into the ‘irregularity’ of which they are the greatest victims. The solution to this should be through public policies for the urban and land tenure regularisation of informal settlements.

The author argues that the ‘solution’ of slum clearance, which only shifts the problem to another address, should be abolished. To adopt a policy of clearance or to consign large areas of cities to irregular land tenure is to oppose the lessons of history, the current legal framework, the economic potential, the possibility of planning and environmental regulation and, especially, the enormous social divide that currently exists in Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro.

Foundation’s experience shows that that a large-scale process of regularisation of land tenure is possible, necessary and urgent in this country and in other countries with similar socio-economic conditions. Such a process would bring about a range of impacts as it would:

• eliminate once and for all the risk of forced removals which is a constant threat to the rights of the poor
• emancipate the black population and the poor from exclusion
• lead to generation and distribution of income as beneficiary families would see their property rise in value
• have a more general impact on the ‘urban economy’ in Rio de Janeiro
• give a legal basis for regularising their urban and environmental situation