Affordable Housing Institute : US

This is a story of land invasion.

 

Do you have permits for this?

 

In utter defiance of the law, a band of informal settlers have chosen to occupy and develop land in defiance of the law. 

A tale from Istanbul, you ask?

 

Gecekondu in Alanya, Turkey

 

Or Sao Paulo?

 

Sao Paulo: Land invasion immediately adjacent to …

 

Sao Paulo: slum redevelopment in Vila Nilo

 

No, it’s from the heart of land-use civilization itself, the English countryside, peaceful Gloucestershire.

 

It’s also a game: Who’s side are you on?  To make the game more interesting, there are three sides you could choose (who they are we’ll tell you later).

 

Cue the Sunday issue of the Daily Mail, which I picked up in the Isle of Wight B&B where the Boss and I were taking a long-weekend holiday (along, it seemed, with half the grandparents and grandchildren of England) after an invigorating week debating the future of affordable housing in the global south at Wilton Park.

 

Anna Tbaijuka, UN Under-Secretary General, at Wilton Park

 

Another bank holiday, another traveller invasion:

 

‘Travellers’, for those Americans and others who don’t know, are itinerant tribes, of the sort once called Gypsies and now, in central Europe, called the Roma.  Continental Roma are horribly discriminated against, and English Travellers are likewise a lightning rod for public commentary.  Says Wikipedia:

 

In 1999 there were 329 public Gypsy sites in England with a total of 5,387 pitches. Whilst there is no official record of the number of private Gypsy sites in the UK, it is estimated that there are approximately 1,200 (lawful and unlawful) in England. The twice yearly Gypsy counts reveal that approximately one third live on sites which lack planning permission and are referred to as ‘unauthorised’. Of these about 70% are described as settled (i.e. likely to have been on the site for some time and wishing to stay) and 30% as ‘transit’ i.e. relatively mobile.

 

My eye was caught by that modest parenthetical; evidently illegal land use and Traveller-hood go hand in hand.

 

The diggers roll in as council officials start their break

 

As we’ll see, the private sector moves much faster than government, and the informal sector moves fastest of all, a critical factor in the action that unfolded last weekend.

 

By Dan Newling

For most of us, the late May Bank Holiday is a chance to sit back, relax and enjoy the early summer sun.

 

What the British label with the quotidian and uninspiring moniker ‘Spring Bank Holiday’ we in America call Memorial Day, when we honor all those who died protecting our country.  We do this in many ways, of which a huge barbeque and the Indianapolis 500 are the two best known.

 

Celebrate America!

 

But this weekend, in the picturesque Gloucestershire village of Newent, one group has been spectacularly hard at work.

 

Travellers have turned a beautiful meadow into a vast encampment, complete with sewerage, toilets and electricity.

 

First spin words – ‘beautiful meadow.’  See helpful Daily Mail photo below:

 

Invasion: Aerial photographs of the meadow near Newent, Gloucestershire after the Travellers moved in on Friday to build on it

 

How Newent wants to be known; for its medieval market

 

The 50–strong work gang arrived at 5pm on Friday – the exact moment that the local council offices shut for the long weekend.

 

Working when government sleeps – how dastardly of them. 

 

We scheme 24/7

 

If you invaded land in rural America, somebody would more than likely approach you with a shotgun in hand.

 

You comin’ on to mah property?

 

Many believe that Travellers are targeting Bank Holiday weekends as prime opportunities to occupy and build on land.

 

This is because local council offices are closed for three days, making it nearly impossible for neighbours to object until the Tuesday.

 

Still, when the weekend’s over, they’ll be turfed off, won’t they?

 

In upmarket Newent, villagers described ‘a military operation’ in which the Travellers used hired lorries and diggers to construct a permanent encampment.

 

This certainly sounds like a land invasion, with which the global south is all too familiar.

 

In the century of cities, we are seeing a quarter-century-long cycle of human urban immigration on a scale that the world has never seen before and will never seen again.  Every day, the world adds population equivalent to roughly four Mumbai’s, and nearly all of that population growth is net increase in urbanized areas – cities.  In the global south, cities are where people walk to their (usually informal) work, and development land is at an enormous premium.  Naturally enough, in these situations people invade land and settle on it.  The invasion may be merely overnight (homeless individuals) or for short intervals (homeless encampments), or for extended periods (mobile homes). 

 

Land invasion, Sao Paulo

 

However it happens, land that was physically unoccupied (and often legally conserved) becomes a bustling micro-community – overnight.  That sudden incumbency confers on the occupants a right of legal right-of-inertia, to the point that in Turkey, for instance, the word for informal housing is gecekondu – mushroom homes – because under Ottoman law a dwelling that was built and occupied in a night has legal status, as if it popped up like a mushroom.

 

Working well into the night, they cleared the field, installed septic tanks and toilets, and fenced off and gravelled pitches for 12 caravans.

 

The first step in any land use is temporary overnight accommodations, and that usually means a portable form of a home.  And that, it seems blatantly clear, is what the Travellers intend to do.

 

One witness said: ‘They used the earthmoving equipment to knock a hole through the hedge, then it all happened extremely quickly.

 

When the military seeks to establish a new camp as quickly as possible, they throw up Quonset huts.  For the Travellers, even if a higher use might one day be in contemplation, overnight occupancy as caravans is a prerequisite.

 

‘Big lorries arrived carrying the hardcore and they set to work. It was like a military operation. I don’t think the British Army could do better.’

 

Actually, it’s more like a fixed-price general contractor.

 

Homestead: The Travellers used diggers to create the site

 

The Travellers’ new home is just outside Newent, in farmland opposite three large houses, the biggest of which is worth around £1million.

 

Now for the twist:

Not the holy spigot?

 

Neighbours said a syndicate of four Travellers had bought the farmland for £65,000.

 

Wait a minute!  You mean they own the land?

 

Actually, wait until tomorrow

 

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

 

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