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Community-driven land tenure strategies: the experiences of the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines

Miriam College and De La Salle University in Metro Manila, Philippines, iremil{at}yahoo.com

Jason Christopher Rayos Co

Davao City, southern Philippines, kulitjulian{at}yahoo.co.uk, jace.co{at}gmail.com

This paper describes and discusses community-driven land tenure initiatives to address the issue of access to land in urban areas in the Philippines. This includes countering actual and threatened displacements from market-driven land, housing and urban development policies, mega-infrastructure development and disasters. The paper begins with a review of the relevant Philippines land and housing policies and their implications. It then describes the experience of the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines with three different land acquisition strategies (direct negotiated purchase, the Community Mortgage Programme, and usufruct schemes) in responding to the need for land and housing and to threats of, or actual, displacements. This includes case studies of community-led land acquisition initiatives by federation homeowners associations in Montalban, Iloilo and Albay (direct purchase), Quezon City (Community Mortgage Programme) and Quezon City and Muntinlupa (usufruct). It then considers what has been learned from these initiatives and what they imply for enabling mechanisms and policies to benefit self-help, low-income communities in their land tenure improvement initiatives. This includes a discussion of the potential advantages of usufruct in securing tenure more easily than with conventional land titling programmes.

Key Words: Community Mortgage Programme • community-led land acquisition strategies • negotiated direct purchase • usufructs

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Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 21, No. 2, 415-441 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0956247809344362


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Teodoro, J. I. E Articles by Rayos Co, J. C. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?