De las garantías judiciales relacionadas con los procedimientos

This section examines some of the implications of consumption and production-oriented approaches in the analysis of low-income landlords. It stresses why the approach may not be applicable in the study of low-income landlords. It argues that, while policies derived from consumption-oriented approaches tend to be misdirected, productive approaches have a positive impact.

The scale of letting, type of building and property is sometimes used to categorise landlords. The categorisation of landlords according to the scale of letting is misleading in our attempt to explain the development of forms of landlords. If one takes into consideration, ownership and non ownership of land as the basis for analysing landlords, subsistence landlords do not own land. Having gained access to land by entering into informal land relations with the landowners. This method of accessing land can lead to subsistence landlords entering into multiple informal land relations with landowners resulting in that they no longer have access to single plots or there could be more than a single dwelling on a piece of plot. Amongst the residential subsistence landlords, multiple dwellings are also possible. This classification presupposes a relation between dwellings, plots and the financial position of landlords. For instance, subsistence landlords may be viewed as large scale landlords and better off. Where in actual fact they have income which barely meet the minimum level of subsistence. The approach may associate multiple-plot access to multiple ownership, whereas the former can take place without the householders having made investment on plots through purchase. Relating this category to petty capitalist landlords, it is an adequate tool since it does not take into consideration the changing financial status of petty capitalists. While petty capitalists may differ from subsistence landlords in the ways in which they acquired plots through purchase. Indicating that the different financial circumstances and financial positions of the petty capitalist is not static concept as it may be affected by both internal an external factors. For instance, a petty capitalist landlord who had previously reflected a better financial position, may today live below the poverty line, despite the fact that he/she had previously invested on plots. Therefore, the scale of letting on its own, may have no relevance to their present status. Another problem arises from the failure to relate the scale of letting to rents, (derived from multiple-plots investments, and the contribution of dwellings in the form of rents) to landlords' income and whether this contributes to the understanding of landlords' households living below or above the poverty line. The concept is not flexible enough to accommodate changes and even variations between and within similar forms of landlord.

The concept does not differentiate between those who have actually invested in properties, such as petty capitalist landlords with multiple-plot investments or those who have not invested on plots at all and subsistence landlords with no income to purchase plots.

Landlords are forced to continue letting space because they cannot sell properties or evict tenants. The perspective implies the ownership of properties by the landlords. It is argued that it is when low-income landlords are examined in relation to land tenure, ownership and non ownership of land that we are able to reveal that landlords relation to land does not always reflect ownership. Landlords may not own land but may have acquired it through some informal land relations between the landowner and the non landowner. Therefore, under these conditions, the mobility of landlords, whether downward, upward or even the dissolution of landlordism is influenced by these relations. The dissolution of landlordism cannot always be linked with the selling of plots for profit, because their ownership of plots may not have existed in the first place.

To define rents as either high or low, based on the amount of the tenants' income used for rent is misleading. Rents only make sense when they are related to forms of landlords and tenure. Rents are affected by the land tenure systems, whether land is owned or not and investments made on plots, plot sizes, quality of accommodation, services provided and the types of rental accommodation. Plot sizes and land tenure further determine the level o f investments and how the land is used; such as combining residential and commercial lettings. Even within the same form of landlordism and settlements, there would be variations in way landlords charge rent. It may not reflect the investments made on rental housing since rent may be charged according to the status o f the tenants, room sizes or even the number of year’s tenants have been renting space from the same landlord. Rents, under the production approach are a function of land, plot sizes and tenure.

The consumption approaches arrive at different conclusions to those advanced by the production approach, when poverty among low-income households is considered. Amis, uses poverty to explain the implication of landlords to tenants. As a result of the commercialisation of land, squatters who have previously had access to free land are subjected to poverty when they become tenants. While the productive oriented approach acknowledges the transformation o f non commercialised forms of land. The commercialisation of land, forces low-income householders to enter into informal land relations and become landlords. Poverty, expressed by the inability of low-income households to afford a piece of plot will be evident in the rise in the number of informal land relations. They are forced to enter into these relations

and to become landlords. However, it cannot be implied that commercialisation of land generates poverty among low-income households nor the establishment of informal land relation be equated with poverty, as some householders voluntarily enter into these relationships. Therefore, the various effects that land transformation has on low-income households is best understood if examined within the forms of landlords. For instance, to some householders poverty can be expressed by an inability to purchase a plot (subsistence landlord). For petty bourgeois landlords, entering into informal land relations is not a reflection o f poverty as they can afford to purchase a plot. Poverty, should not be considered as the only explanation of landlordism as petty bourgeois landlords may enter into informal land relations in order to have an extra cash income. Petty capitalist landlords may also enter into these land relations in order to expand capital. They let space for different reasons than those of subsistence landlords. Rent is not a cause of poverty.

Because the consumption oriented approaches deal with tenancy and landlords only in passing and not in relation to land, there are limitations in the use of the concept, absentee landlords. Absentee landlords are equated with ownership of more than one plot and are therefore considered to be slightly better off. The approach does not distinguish between absentee landlords according to their relation to land. The transformation of non commercialised land systems observed during the introduction of individual tenures and freehold land rights, may render this form o f land tenure to be less attainable by the poor. Absentee landlords may result from combining informal methods of accessing land that do not involve purchase.

One of the misconceptions advanced by the consumption approach is that of associating tenants with poor households and landlords as financially better off, in particular those owning more than a single plot. This misconception is evident in Amis who reported that in one of the squatter settlements of Nairobi, Kenya, where landlords are reported to be deriving rental profits ranging between 100 and 144 per cent. If one looks at the profits landlords make through letting, the claim of exploitation of tenants is justified. Amis, himself has constantly referred to the commercialisation of squatter settlements, where access to land is no longer free but settlements are inhabited by tenants. Then, because the approach explains the profits derived from renting by keeping housing at the consumption level, the production of self-help housing is increasingly divorced from the production of low-income rental accommodation. As

a result of less recognition of how self-help housing is produced, and the circumstances under which houses initially produced for consumption are also let to tenants, some of the writers have fallen into the trap of basing the role of rents on consumption, and presupposing wealthiness to prevail among the landlords, and exploitation and poverty to be the universal lot of tenants. If we do not know how landlords produce rental accommodation, apart from the profits they make, and understand the forms and variety in the quality of rental accommodation they produce, how can the profitability of rental accommodation be assessed? Secondly, as explored in Section 1.7, it was shown that defining profits of rental accommodation solely from the consumption side, divorced from the production of low- income rental housing, the relation of rents to landlords’ income, the expansion of rental accommodation, and profits alone, does very little to further our understanding not only of how rental housing is produced but also o f how profits are being used to generate new low- income rental stock. Thus policy intervention has often emphasised the protection of tenants from exploitative landlords. These interventions have been of different forms, rent control being the most common. Controlling rents simply means the fixing of rental standards by courts and introducing measures such as the stipulation of monthly rentals based on the age of the building and building costs (Lemmer, 1987; Kumar, 1994; Seong-Kyu, 1987; Aina, 1990).

Another concern on the part of governments to protect tenants has been noticed through the intervention and formation of tenant organisations, and tenant ordinances. Wahab (1984:10) illustrates the impact of rent-control policies on landlords in Baldia township, in Karachi:

... a man who had paid and still was paying the same amount of rent for the last fifteen years. Some of his neighbours who rented from the same landlord had also stopped paying rents. Instead of paying the usual Rs 250 every month, they now gave the landlord Rs 25. There was nothing the landlord could do about this, as, the man said, “we are protected by the law” .