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Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there were one billion slum residents and squatters globally. Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below.
Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a neighborhood changes through the influx of more affluent residents and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has been used to describe a wide array of phenomena, sometimes in a pejorative connotation.
Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee.
A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents or other temporary structures.
A shanty town, squatter area,squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated tin sheets. A typical shanty town is squatted and in the beginning lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity and street drainage. Over time, shanty towns can develop their infrastructure and even change into middle class neighbourhoods. They can be small informal settlements or they can house millions of people.
In urban planning, infill, or in-fill, is the rededication of land in an urban environment, usually open-space, to new construction. Infill also applies, within an urban polity, to construction on any undeveloped land that is not on the urban margin. The slightly broader term "land recycling" is sometimes used instead. Infill has been promoted as an economical use of existing infrastructure and a remedy for urban sprawl. Detractors view increased urban density as overloading urban services, including increased traffic congestion and pollution, and decreasing urban green-space. Many also dislike it for social and historical reasons, partly due to its unproven effects and its similarity with gentrification.
Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median, as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency homeless shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental, to formal and informal rental, indigenous housing, and ending with affordable home ownership. Demand for affordable housing is generally associated with a decrease in housing affordability, such as rent increases, in addition to increased homelessness.
Middle East is a neighborhood in the heart of East Baltimore, Maryland.
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was a non-racial popular movement made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa. It was formed in November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.
Movement for Justice in El Barrio is a community organization based in East Harlem, New York City that is a reaction to, and organizes against, gentrification in the neighborhood.
Take Back the Land is an American organization based in Miami, Florida, devoted to blocking evictions, and rehousing homeless people in foreclosed houses. Take Back the Land was formed in October 2006 to build the Umoja Village shantytown on a plot of unoccupied land to protest gentrification and a lack of low-income housing in Miami. The group began opening houses in October 2007 and moved six homeless families into vacant homes in 2008. By April 2009, the group had moved 20 families into foreclosed houses. As of November 2008, the group had ten volunteers. Take Back the Land volunteers break into the houses, clean, paint, and make repairs, change the locks, and help move the homeless families in. They provide supplies and furniture and help residents turn on electricity and water. Though the occupations are of contested legality, as of December 2008 local police officers were not intervening, judging it to be the responsibility of house owners to protect their property or request assistance.
In the United States, squatting occurs when a person enters land that does not belong to them without lawful permission and proceeds to act in the manner of an owner. Historically, squatting occurred during the settlement of the Midwest when colonial European settlers established land rights and during the California Gold Rush. There was squatting during the Great Depression in Hoovervilles and also during World War II. Shanty towns returned to the US after the Great Recession (2007–2009) and in the 2010s, there were increasing numbers of people occupying foreclosed homes using fraudulent documents. In some cases, a squatter may be able to obtain ownership of property through adverse possession.
The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
Umoja is a residential suburb in the city of Nairobi. Located within the larger sub-county of Embakasi and the Eastlands area of Nairobi. It is approximately 8.4 kilometres (5.2 mi) east of Nairobi's central business district. Umoja consists of three smaller neighbourhoods: Umoja I, Umoja II and Umoja Innercore.
Even though mathematically more housing than needed is produced in Egypt resulting in millions of vacant homes, large portions of its residents live in inadequate housing that may lack secure tenure, safe drinking water and wastewater treatment, are crowded or are prone to collapse, as better housing is widely unaffordable. While there is also a problem with homelessness especially amongst children.
The gentrification of San Francisco has been an ongoing source of tension between renters and working people who live in the city as well as real estate interests. A result of this conflict has been an emerging antagonism between longtime working-class residents of the city and the influx of new tech workers. A major increase of gentrification in San Francisco has been attributed to the Dot-Com Boom in the 1990s, creating a strong demand for skilled tech workers from local startups and close by Silicon Valley businesses leading to rising standards of living. As a result, a large influx of new workers in the internet and technology sector began to contribute to the gentrification of historically poor immigrant neighborhoods such as the Mission District. During this time San Francisco began a transformation eventually culminating in it becoming the most expensive city to live in the United States.
Gentrification in the United States is commonly associated with an influx of higher-income movers into historically divested neighborhoods with existing, working-class residents, often resulting in increases in property prices and investment into new developments. Displacement and gentrification are also linked, with consequences of gentrification including displacement of pre-existing residents and cultural erasure of the historic community. In the United States, discussions surrounding gentrification require critical analysis of race and other demographic data in examining the inequalities and disparities between existing residents, the community, new buyers, and developers caused by gentrification.
Squatting in Nigeria refers to a person who is not the owner, taking possession of land or an empty house. Squatters migrate from the countryside to informal settlements in cities such as Abuja, Port Harcourt and in particular Lagos. Lagos had a population of over 14 million people in 2019 and many slums, including Makoko.
Climate gentrification is a subset of climate migration, in which certain lower-socioeconomic communities are displaced in place of housing for more wealthy communities. Areas affected by this phenomenon are typically coastal cities, islands, and other vulnerable areas that are susceptible to rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and other climate-related disasters.
References
- ↑ "Cengage Learning". accessmylibrary.com. Retrieved 19 August 2015.
- ↑ Adathakkar, Priyanshu (2007-11-26). "Low cost housing in Miami". beautifulcity.us. Archived from the original on 2007-11-26. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
- ↑ "Settlement Agreement". miami.edu. Retrieved 19 August 2015.
- ↑ Samuels, Robert; Arthur, Lisa (2007-04-27). "Shantytown fire renews fears". Miami Herald. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
- ↑ Samuels, Robert (2012-02-29). "Housing Activists Try Squatter Strategy". judicialaccountability.org. Archived from the original on 2012-02-29. Retrieved 2018-04-23.
- ↑ Rameau, Max (2008). Take back the land: Land, gentrification and the Umoja Village shantytown. Miami, FL: Nia Interactive Press. ISBN 978-1-4348-4556-6.
