 you have multiple generations of peasants squatters that cultivate and live on the lands almost as a human parts of the property package when i d read that getting legal title can take NUMBER years when i believe that NUMBER year ought to be more than sufficient and helped by the cairo reference i d assumed that we were talking about the urban poor if i see people living in mansions or even in suburban subdivisions i assume they didn t have too much trouble with their titles if i see people living in shanties and haphazard alleyways i tend to assume their parcels weren t exactly recorded on the government maps or paid for with a bank loan especially when nearby vacant lots have shotgun wielding men presumably intent on keeping them development free now it may be that manhattanites view of america to say that outside of metro manila davao and maybe another city or two cebu everything else literally is the boondocks but going on that very broad assumption i guess i m describing the flip side of mr roger s experience the paisanos who leave behind those who remain on a patron s rural land move to manila and the second assumption squat in shantytowns there at least until they can line up a middle class job so going on two large assumptions i can come up with a scenario under which title would take NUMBER years a shantytown arises somewhere in the midst of a section or whatever the spanish used to divvy up the land and it takes decades of arguing to put together a package which somehow can both compensate the owner and record lots for the inhabitants just transferring title to an existing lot between parties who have money ought not to be a problem the obvious solution at least to us barking farting chihuahuas on fork is to introduce market mechanisms it is left as an exercise to come up with one which works when many of the agents are perceived to have negligible npv dave land reform meant that all the agricultural producers had to plant crops all the time profitable or not what happened to more highly capitalized land putting in trees instead of crops sounds like it might sidestep that mr long i think you d particularly enjoy the de soto work on the to find list any chance of an explanation of that bell jar in the meantime URL 