Thursday, May 24, 2007

Squatters Rights in the UK

Harry Hallowes, 70, who came to London from Ireland when he was 20 and has been living for decades in a self-built shanty deep in the woods of Hampstead Heath has won the title to his house and garden. He applied for the deed based on adverse possession after a property firm tried to evict him. The BBC has details.

Friday, May 18, 2007

struggling to put food on the table

A short article from IRIN News notes that women are more often than not the principle breadwinners in their families in the shantytowns of Nairobi.

--thanks to Mohamed for pointing me towards this article.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Squatters enjoy life

The Fiji Times has discovered that squatters are real people and enjoy life. I'm shocked. Shocked.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Renewal or Removal in Dharavi

National Public Radio's Morning Edition today featured a reasonably balanced piece on the proposal to remove residents from Dharavi, one of the last remaining major squatter areas in teh center of Mumbai, and replace them with a planned community. You can listen to the piece, by reporter Philip Reeves, here.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

what would Gandhi say?

Mumbai's historic salt pan lands (used for the past 250 years for the production of salt) may now become history, as the government wants to hand the remaining 5,500 acres of the coastal flats to developers who seek to relocate squatters from communities in the center of the city, The Business Standard reports. Environmentalists are worried about development on these fragile parcels, which are some of the densely developed city's last remaining open land.

Mumbai airport offers deal to squatters

The Business Standard reports that Mumbai's Airport Authority wants to relocate 60,000 squatters so it can expand its runways. The squatters are holding out for replacement housing near the airport, as most of them work for the authority that is trying to evict htem.

resistance is not futile

Residents of Bagatelle, a squatter community in Trinidad & Tobago, have vowed to resist efforts to remove them to make way for a stadium, Trinidad and Tobago's Newsday reports. The squatters say most of them applied for official 'certificates of comfort' (which I guess are what we in New York would call certificates of occupancy) 15 years ago, but got not official action. Anasthasia Dailey, head of the Diego Martin and Environs Committee for a Better Community, said it was "time to legalise Bagatelle and all communities out there whom Mr Rowley [T&T Housing Minister Keith Rowley] considers squatters."