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Policy responses to tenure insecurity141ensuring that valuable land is not left vacant. Furthermore, itensures the exclusion of land investors and speculators. Theformalizing of adverse possession rights in the way undertakenunder the City Statute in Brazil, conferring security oftenure to long-time residents, may serve as a model for othercountries, as well, in their efforts to reduce price speculationin land by making the conferral of such rights easier and lesscontroversial.There is no doubt that there are a number of advantagesto formalizing housing through titling approaches, andthat many of the characteristics of legalizing what arepresently informal arrangements can have considerablebenefits. This approach enables households to use theirproperty titles as collateral in obtaining loans from formalsectorfinance institutions in order to improve their homesor develop businesses. Moreover, it helps local authorities toincrease the proportion of planned urban land and provideservices more efficiently; it enables local governments tointegrate informal settlements within the tax system; and itimproves the efficiency of urban land and propertymarkets. 12 It has also been argued that such formalizationwill empower poor households; give them additional politicalinfluence and voice, thus strengthening democratic ideals;and may also increase the land user’s investmentincentives. 13Titling is seen as the strongest legal form that theregistration of tenure rights can take, with titles usuallyguaranteed by the state. It is also, however, the most expensiveform of registration to carry out, requiring formalsurveys and checking of all rival claims to the property. Inmany developing countries, local governments may beunable to muster the resources required to establish the landmanagement and regulatory frameworks as well as institutionsrequired to make the provision of freehold titles to all arealistic endeavour. Many observers have thus noted thatBox 6.5 The legalization of Turkey’s gecekonduDuring close to 500 years of Ottoman rule, all land in Turkey was held by the Sultan. Privateownership simply meant the right to collect taxes on a particular parcel. This tradition continuesin many of Turkey’s cities today, and huge tracts of land remain either under federal controlor owned through an ancient tradition called hisseli tapu (shared title) (see also Box III.1). Thisownership system is, however, quite outmoded today and shares have not been apportioned;most share owners have no idea even how many other shareholders there are.Millions of people who came to Turkey’s cities over the last 50 years made use of thistradition. They took advantage of an ancient Turkish legal precept: that no matter who ownsthe land, if people get their houses built overnight and move in by morning, they cannot beevicted without being taken to court. This is why squatter housing in Turkey is calledgecekondu, meaning ‘it happened at night’. Many such communities have thrived under thisarrangement and feature well-developed infrastructure and popularly elected governments.Today, almost half of the residents of Istanbul (perhaps 6 million people) dwell in homes thateither are gecekondu or were when they were first constructed.Gecekondu land invasions became a noticeable phenomenon in Turkey during the early1940s. By 1949, the Turkish government made its first attempt to regulate such constructionsby passing a law requiring municipalities to destroy the illegal dwellings. But this proved to bepolitically unpalatable. Only four years later, the government modified the law, allowing existinggecekondu to be improved and only mandating demolition of new developments. This was effectivelythe first gecekondu amnesty in Turkey. In 1966, the government rewrote that law again,granting amnesty to all gecekondu houses constructed over the 13 years since the previous lawhad been enacted. At the same time, they introduced new programmes to promote developmentof alternatives to gecekondu housing.By 1984, the government essentially gave up the fight against already existing squatters.It passed a new law that again gave amnesty to all existing gecekondu communities and authorizedthe areas to be redeveloped with higher-density housing. Even without planning permission,squatters quickly realized that they could take advantage of the new law. They began rippingdown their old-fashioned single-storey homes and building three- and four-storey ones ofreinforced concrete and brick. In 1990, the government issued a new gecekondu amnesty, againessentially accepting all of the illegal neighbourhoods that had already been built.Source: Neuwirth, 2007Box 6.6 Adverse possessionAdverse possession is a legal doctrine under which a person orcommunity in possession of land owned by someone else canacquire legal rights, including title to it, as long as certain legalrequirements are complied with and the adverse possessor is inpossession for a sufficient period of time, which can rangeanywhere from 5 to 20 years. While specific requirements maydiffer between countries and different legal regimes, adversepossession generally requires the actual, visible, hostile, notorious,exclusive and continuous possession of another’s property, andsome jurisdictions further require the possession to be madeunder a claim of title or a claim of right. In simple terms, thismeans that those attempting to claim the property are occupyingit exclusively (keeping out others) and openly as if it were theirown. Generally, possession must be continuous without challengeor permission from the lawful owner for a fixed statutory periodin order to acquire title.While often associated with the squatting process withinthe informal settlements of the developing world, adverse possessionclaims exist in developed countries as well. For instance, theSources: a) Parker, 2003; b) de Soto, 2000; c) Deininger, 2003; d) Imparto, 2002.Land Registry in the UK receives an average of 20,000 applicationsfor adverse possession registration every year, 75 per cent ofwhich are successful. Under law binding until 2003, squatters in theUK could claim adverse possession of land or property following12 years of possession. A new Land Registration Act of 2002 didnot abolish adverse possession rights, but created a mechanismwhereby the owner of the land concerned has a right to evict asquatter before the current possessors can gain title. aSimilarly, adverse possession was also the main mechanismwhereby most settlers in the US acquired their land. b Today, all USstates retain legal provisions upholding the ability of squatters toacquire ownership rights through continued possession of aproperty in good faith for a specified period. cMoreover, the process of adverse possession is also includedin the City Statute in Brazil (see Box 11.8) as a constructive meansof establishing secure tenure and enforcing social equity in the useof urban property. Such rights (called usucapião) are defined as theright to tenure acquired by the possession of property, without anyopposition, during a period established by law. dAdverse possession… is a mechanism… ensuring thatvaluable land is notleft vacant