3.6 Lessons on Affordable Land Delivery: The International Experience
3.6.4 The Land Sharing Strategy
Unauthorised occupants can claim a right to ‘share’ with the landowner a parcel of land they do not own on the basis of two tenets. Firstly, they have a right to live on a piece of land in the city they have lived on for many years. Secondly, they have a share in the increase in value of the land resulting from public investments in reticulated infrastructure services and amenities and private investment by investors other than the landowner (Islam & Sheng, 1989). Thus, society can claim a portion of the increased value in the form of increased fixed-property tax or by a land sharing arrangement between unauthorised occupants and the landowner (ibid). The core objective of this strategy is to accommodate commercial development on land occupied by unauthorised occupants, without evicting the occupants who through adverse possession have the right to remain on the land.
According to Rabé (2010; 2005), Islam and Sheng (1989) and Angel and Boonyabancha (1988), land sharing has been utilised with varying levels of success in assembling urban residential land in Phnom
88 Penh (Cambodia) and Bangkok (Thailand). The pilot projects in Bangkok were a success during the 1970s and 1980s and inspired similar projects in Phnom Penh during the early 2000s (Rabé, 2010). The Bangkok schemes provide vital lessons on land sharing that could inform South African housing practitioners. Before highlighting these lessons, it is important to explain briefly the six preconditions of successful land sharing.
For land sharing to work, parties engaged in a land dispute have to agree to come to a compromise solution. Thus, six preconditions need to be in place for unauthorised occupants and landowners or developers to have an incentive to negotiate an agreement to divide or share a plot of contested urban land. The agreement allows the landowner to regain control of the plot and the right to build on high- value portion of the plot while the unauthorised occupants moved off the high-value portion of the plot and are re-housed on the remaining portion of the same plot in adequate housing with secure tenure (Lipman & Rajack, 2011; Rabé 2005).
Firstly, the situation most conducive to land sharing is a booming fixed-property market in inner-city areas (Rabé, 2010). While evictions of unauthorised occupants typically tend to increase when land values rise, a booming fixed-property market may also push landowners to become amenable to compromise once alternative ways to remove unauthorised occupants from the land have been exhausted (ibid). Secondly, a well-established community of unauthorised occupants of a contested land parcel have greater bargaining power against the landowner and developers (ibid). The unauthorised occupants would have, over time, acquired the right of adverse possession and built-up political connections or alliances with CBOs, NGOs and human rights groups to avoid eviction. Thirdly, organisation and consensus of this community of occupants allows them to mobilise to resist eviction and counter the threat of eviction by uniting during negotiations with the landowner and developer (Lipman & Rajack, 2011). Fourthly, third-party intermediation by a public agency with an interest in an amicable and fair outcome to the land dispute is a critical prerequisite of a successful land sharing agreement (Rabé, 2010). This agency must broker an agreement that is technically and financially feasible and adequately meets the interests of all parties while enforcing the agreement on all parties.
Fifthly, a plot that is to be shared must be of sufficient size to accommodate safely the juxtaposition of residential and commercial land-uses (ibid). The new configuration of the shared plot may not re- house all of the unauthorised occupants, but the community must negotiate the criteria on who leaves and who can stay. Sixthly, the new housing is supposed to be financed entirely by private developers through cross-subsidies from commercial activities on the high-value portion of the plot (ibid). Each land sharing agreement must be based on site-specific technical considerations and financing mechanisms, which allow low-income households to gain access to land in inner-city areas with secure tenure without the need for a public subsidy (ibid).
89 The lessons that public policymakers in South Africa could learn from the successful land sharing schemes in Bangkok is their ability to bridge the divides between formal and informal settlements and between public and private interests. Land sharing in Bangkok brought a ‘win-win-win’ solution for unauthorised occupants, the municipality and private landowners or developers (Rabé, 2005). It enabled illegal occupants to remain on occupied land in inner-city areas, residing in free new housing paid for by private developers (Lipman & Rajack, 2011). Public policymakers in South Africa could learn from the Bangkok experience how these schemes created a pathway for unauthorised occupants to obtain secure tenure and alleviate informality in inner-city areas. This experience could also inform public policymakers in South Africa how the principle of cross-subsidisation could be used as an instrument to finance the upgrading of informal settlements. According to Hunter and Posel (2012), municipalities in South Africa struggle to accommodate non-residential development on land in inner- city areas occupied by unauthorised inhabitants. These municipalities could learn from the land sharing schemes in Bangkok how to accommodate commercial development on inner-city land, currently occupied by unauthorised inhabitants, without the need to go through time-consuming and chaotic eviction proceedings.
Public institutions in South Africa such as the Housing Development Agency lack organisational structures that are mature or robust to withstand the external pressure directed at them by municipalities, private developers and unauthorised occupants during the process of land assembly and informal settlement upgrading. Public policymakers in South Africa could learn from the land sharing schemes in Phnom Penh that low-income households will continue to struggle to access AURL, if public institutions fail to develop sufficient and necessary institutional structures and political will that are needed to make land sharing a success. The land sharing schemes in Phnom Penh failed while those in Bangkok were successful because civil society organisations and public organisations such as the National Housing Authority provided the vital institutional framework to support the land sharing efforts (Rabé, 2010).
In South Africa, land assembly via expropriation with compensation is proving to be a challenge because of deadlocks in agreeing on a fair price between private landowners and the government.
Thus, public policymakers in South Africa could learn from the land sharing schemes in Bangkok how the municipality or civil society organisations, as mediators between unauthorised occupants and private developers, managed to shape the land sharing outcomes. This form of intermediation experience could be vital in informing South Africa public policymakers how to formulate regulations guiding the selection of beneficiaries of this form of land reform and housing development. According to Aliber and Hall (2012) and Mitlin and Satterthwaite (2004), the process of selecting beneficiaries of land reform or public housing projects is not transparent. In this regard, South Africa could learn from
90 the Bangkok and Phnom Penh experiences; land sharing in Bangkok was a success because intermediation was impartial and procedures for the selection of beneficiaries were transparent (Rabé, 2010). Land sharing in Phnom Penh failed because intermediation was not impartial and selection of beneficiaries was not transparent; it was undermined by corrupt practices of municipal officials. To reduce corrupt practices, public policymakers in South Africa could draw lessons from community land trust schemes that use non-profit companies to assemble land for housing development.