QCOSTARICA – Squatter’s Rights, or Prescriptive Rights, as they are formally referred to as in the English Common Law jurisdictions, such as the U.S., Canada, and English Commonwealth Countries, have largely been abolished by Statute during the last one hundred and twenty year period, in those jurisdictions.
Unfortunately, that same transformation has not taken place in Civil Law (Roman Law) jurisdictions such as Costa Rica.
The whole idea of Squatter’s Rights, that is rights to possess and occupy land without taking formal title to it, arose from the original settlement of Costa Rica as an agriculturally based nation.
In the settlement process, large tracts of land, much of which was suited for agricultural purposes, were granted by the Spanish Monarchy, to their friends and other members of the Spanish Nobility.
In short, many of the Spanish Noble owners of these lands never came to occupy, or otherwise develop them, not wanting to associate themselves with “a bunch of heathens” in the New World.
Accordingly, the notion of Squatter’s Rights developed, to allow the cultivation of these somewhat abandoned properties by third parties willing to occupy and convert them into sustained agricultural production.
This was seen as a good thing for the Costa Rican Society as a whole, rather than to leave the lands fallow. Such third parties were granted rights of possession and occupation of the lands under the law, acquired over-time, in return for their labours of farming them; hence, “Squatter’s Rights” came into being.
Now, fast forward to what Squatter’s Rights means today in Costa Rica. In present day Costa Rica, Squatter’s Rights stands for nothing more than a perversion of the law. Agricultural production is conducted in a completely different manner than it was two hundred years ago, when these Rights arose.
Albeit, there are many more legal restrictions associated with acquiring such Rights today than previous. Vacant land in rural areas of the Country is more at risk, with organized “gangs” of squatters ready to occupy such lands, for the sole purpose of acquiring Squatter’s Rights over time and ultimately stealing the land from the rightful, registered title owner.
It has become nothing more than a legalized business of land thievery. Such Rights begin to be acquired after only ninety days of uninterrupted occupation of the land by the squatters, in an open and peaceful manner, and culminates in an Application to the Court by the squatter(s) to acquire a registered title to the land, following a ten year period of such occupation.
The only way to protect yourself as the registered owner of the property title of such lands, is to fence the perimeter of them, placing “Private Property/Keep Out” signs every few meters around the perimeter, and hiring a caretaker under a written contract to watch the lands and report to you as the owner, of any observed squatter activity.
The irony of having to have a written contract with the caretaker, is that if the legal relationship between the land owner and the caretaker is not clear, the caretaker can in-fact acquire the Squatter’s Rights that you as the owner are trying to protect against.
Obviously, the short and long-term solution to this perversion of the law, is to abolish Squatter’s Rights by Statute, as has been done in English Common Law jurisdictions.
And the problem is that if Tico can get 3 people to lie for him and witness the occupation, you can lose your land too. CR law is getting 3 people to lie for you.
Question: If Joe and his three friends, their four wives, eight children, and in-laws now have the land, but don’t have any money; how are they going to make the land useful to the 32 of them? 33. 34 and counting …
In the main I think you are right, but a contemporary question remains: Do people whose only failing is poverty not have a right to a parcel of earth on which to sleep? I suspect that squatters rights have become a perversion, with the irony that the so-called squatters or frequently put up to it by affluent lawyers bent in stealing the land, but in fairness there is also the question of where poor people can legally sleep.
INDER ( the Institute for Rural Development), formerly called IDA (the Institute for Agricultural Development), a Costa Rica Government agency, exists for just such reasons. Government land can be parceled-out to the poor for agricultural purposes under conditions of occupation and sustained agricultural production.
Good to know, but I wonder how successful it is. Homelessness is seemingly a significant problem in Costa Rica, as well as many other countries, and while archaic squatter’s rights laws don’t seem a viable solution, I don’t know what is. I personally have guys sleeping under my front porch–one even brought in some lumber and started constructing a casita–and I really don’t like that, but I honestly don’t know where they can sleep. The bigger picture is then the shantytowns. Ironically, the people who passed the squatter’s rights laws a long time ago were seemingly more compassionate toward the poor than we are. I don’t see squatter’s rights as having much if any utility today either, but now that land is “real estate” and all of it is owned by somebody, I don’t know where the landless can go without violating somebody’s property rights. Is INDER handling the problem? Somehow I doubt it.
This discussion brings to mind a verse in Arlo Guthrie’s version of his father’s song, “This Land Is Your Land,” although for all I know Woody wrote the verse. Here it is:
As I was walking, I saw a sign there,
On the sign it said “no trespassing”
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
I don’t want guys building casitas under my front porch and want the property rights of owners respected, but I can’t shake the feeling that we are looking at this issue too much from the standpoint of the propertied classes. A heck of a lot of people in the world don’t own property, and many of them don’t even have a place to sleep legally. I’d like to see commensurate attention be devoted to this issue.
I recall, a number of years ago now, when a family who was living under a highway bridge in Santa Ana, won the INVU home that is given away by that Government Housing Agency each Christmas to a poor family in Costa Rica. The home was located in a Social Housing Project in Santa Ana, about three kilometers from the bridge under which they were living. The family moved to the new house they had won and lived there for several weeks. They then returned to live under the same bridge where they had been living previously and, I believe, rented the house they had won to a relative. The point being, there is a class of poor people who just can’t be helped. They are socialized into being poor and into living in a certain lifestyle, that even the Government Agencies charged with helping that segment of Society aren’t able to succeed in helping.
I’m not saying that this circumstance is the norm, but I’m convinced that it is more widespread than most people would believe. If you accept that position as being correct, as I do, it is understandable that eradication of poverty is not something that can be achieved only by Government Agencies charged with that duty, it also requires a change of mind-set of the afflicted and a will to help themselves.
Well, the issue was housing, but since you’ve broadened it to poverty in general, let me suggest that you be very careful about faulting the poor or, to put a more polite spin on it, invoking the “culture of poverty” thesis.
What you say about the family living under the bridge after receiving the free house may well be true. There is no shortage of similar stories. However, the failure here would seem to have been on the part of the do-gooders, who didn’t bother to understand the family’s situation in the first place, rather than on the part of the family. This particular family surely reasoned that it was better off with the rental income than with the house, perhaps because it prioritized food over housing, and for all we know it was indebted to the relatives to whom it rented the house or just reasoned that the relatives could get more utility out of the house (and they more utility out of the rental income). There is no reason I see to assume that their decision was irrational, or any less rational than real estate tycoons. The reasoning error was on the part of the do-gooders, who just ignorantly assumed that the family would happily live in the gift house, and didn’t understand the family’s fuller situation or priorities.
But let’s take the next step and assume for the sake of argument that poor people do reason irrationally, or are basically so stupid that no amount of help will ever do any good. The question is then how they got this stupid. Some people might argue that they were simply born stupid, and survival of the fittest being what it is, they naturally end up on the bottom of the social heap. Who knows, there might be some poor people who were just born stupid, but when you compare the family backgrounds of the poor and non-poor, it starts looking like the “born stupid” argument is a lot weaker than the inherited advantage or disadvantage argument. Basically, the vast majority of poor people were born to poor parents while the vast majority of rich people were born to rich parents. Plus, poor children adopted by rich parents do better than poor children raised by their own poor parents. The “born stupid” thesis doesn’t fly very far.
A modification of this argument is that things like poor nutrition and a lousy public education makes poor kids more stupid than rich kids. I think there’s a fair amount of evidence for this, but the moral and policy implications are different. It would seem to me that the right thing to do is intervene in order to provide better nutrition and schooling, and I believe that there’s evidence that these kinds of interventions are successful. Plus, looked at in a longterm accounting, they don’t even cost taxpayers anything. Better fed and educated kids grow up to make more money and pay more taxes, while they don’t cost the criminal justice system as much, so it’s profitable for the taxpayers to prevent kids from growing up stupid for want of adequate nutrition and schooling.
But the main argument for the poor being stupid is the culture of poverty thesis. It asserts that poverty tends to produce certain values, chiefly immediate as opposed to deferred gratification, and these very values prevent the poor from escaping poverty. For instance, if you give a poor person $10,000, they won’t save or invest it in a way that improves their futures, but will blow it all within six months and be right back to being as poor as they were. Worse, while poverty creates these values, once created the values become become fixed and a reason that poverty perpetuates. Indeed, poor parents teach their kids these values, with the result that the kids are pretty much destined to remain poor as a result of embracing these values.
Liberals hate the culture of poverty thesis, and have a fairly strong rebuttal to it. It is not only to give a poor person say $10,000 but also to give them the same assurance the middle class has that they can earn $10,000 year after year, and watch how quickly their values change. That is, the liberals counter that values aren’t as permanent as the culture of poverty thesis assumes, but rather are a rational response to circumstances. Change the circumstances, they say, and the values will change too.
The question is therefore how permanent and thus causal values are, and I personally come down somewhere in the middle of this debate. It seems to me that the liberals are right. Values do arise in response to circumstances, and a fast way to change values is to change circumstances. However, I think values do tend to linger, and when poor values persist they sometimes blind the poor to envisioning a route out of poverty, even though someone like me who wasn’t raised poor can see that route clearly. No, I’ve never known a poor person to receive a $10,000 windfall, much less one who was assured of being able to earn that year after year, but I have seen them fritter away a few hundred dollars when I personally wouldn’t have done that. To me, raised with different values, it’s frustrating to watch the poor seemingly not understand how they might leverage a little bit of money for a better future, and then leverage a little bit more, and so on until they’re no longer poor. But I’ve watched it and therefore suspect that there is some truth to the culture of poverty argument.
Still, the same solution applies, just delayed: Change the opportunity structure for the poor and their values will change. It may not work for any given poor person this week or this year, but it will work for the next generation. Odds are it will even work with adults over a few years. Values are pretty fixed things, but they aren’t permanent.
But all this is to assume that the culture of poverty thesis explains a lot of poverty. Maybe it does, but my guess is that it is usually only a partial explanation. And the alternative is to assume that the poor are as smart and rational as you and I are, but are just responding to different circumstances than we face.
I mean, I can see renting out a free house rather than living in it. Odds are that the family had a decent niche among the homeless under the bridge, lots of friends, plus knew where to scavenge things for cash. Had they moved into a free house in a distant neighborhood, they wouldn’t have any idea how to earn money to buy groceries or pay the light bill. Renting out a free house may have been the rational thing to do in their situation.
Bravo!
Thanks