The stories behind the figures

Some of the stories of movement that emerged from the case studies are told below. They reflect the impact that the formation and breakup of women's relationships with men have on their access to shelter and also the way in which childbearing affects mobility.

Auntie

Auntie was born in St. Ann in 1937. She lived there until she was 17 at which time she came to the City to search for work.

Her first home in the city was composed of a single room in a government barracks that had been constructed in an area known as Cockburn Gardens and she stayed there until 1966 when she was 29. During that year she moved nearer to the harbour, to Majestic Gardens. The move resulted from a split-up with her babyfather. She moved into a single room in a block of six units that lay back-to-back with a further six units.

Things went reasonably well until the violence of the 1980 elections. She was forced out of the area where she was living when her house and furniture were burnt by gunmen and she fled "like a refugee" to a friend who put her up for a few months while she built a single room out of gleaned building materials along the Causeway. Later she moved to a larger spot in the same area where she has been living eight years.

At the time that Auntie moved to the Causeway there were only a few fishermen living along the beach. There were only three huts. However as the election violence increased in places like Greenwich Farm, Hunts Bay, Majestic Gardens and other Kingston housing schemes other people started running. The Causeway seemed an ideal place to run to. People could build a tatoo fairly easily and as most of them were already involved in fishing and fish vending it was a convenient location that would enable them to continue their income-generating activities. The fact that they all came from areas where they had suffered from election violence and from areas that were associated with one of the political parties in particular gave them a certain solidarity.

Gradually more and more people came into the area and the roadside began filling up for a stretch of about quarter of a mile.

If Auntie moved she would probably commute back to the Causeway to run the fish business.

Carmen

Carmen was born in St. James. She first came to Kingston to Mountain View Avenue to look for domestic work. Then she moved to another place on Mountain View Avenue and then to East Street where she has been for 10 years.

Deula

Deula has moved nine times in her life. Most of these moves were between different relatives with whom she lived after her mother died.

Icie

She was born at Bamboo Pen on Mona Road. Since then she has only moved twice and she's been living in the same place for 20 years.

Lena

Lena's case study has been presented in full as an annex and provides a typical example of the manner in which women move from one home to another in Jamaica. Her moves have been:

Letty

She originally came from Clarendon but has lived in her present house for 36 years.

Marcia

She was born in Westmorland and lived with her grandparents. When they got old she went to live with one of her aunts.

She describes coming to Kingston and her search for a job.

Megan

She was born in St. Ann. When she was 12 her mother took her and her sister to Kingston to seek a better life and to get away from her father "who was a wicked man." It was 10 years before Megan saw her father again.

The small family moved into a rented room with a concrete floor and board walls in the western part of the city. They stayed there for four years in a tenement yard where they had a board unit with a zinc roof. In 1972 there were elections and trouble in the area led to Megan moving to another area. However in 1977 the area she moved to came under attack from supporters of the rival party during the political violence that erupted in Western Kingston. In the late 1970s, the yard that Megan was living in was burnt out. The family had to move hurriedly to a lane just off Waltham Park Road where they moved into a unit they hurriedly constructed of cardboard, zinc and wood. They took as much building material as possible from the burntout building and this is evident as much of the zinc and board is scorched and burnt.

When Megan moved into the area she is now in she found herself a vacant lot. It had not been vacant long but the previous squatter had recently died and his dwelling unit was vandalized and literally disappeared "overnight" so there was ample space for Megan to build her small one-room unit. The area in question is extremely politicized and Megan had to get permission from the ranking leadership in the area before she could move in and also had to agree to abide by the rules and activities of the community.

Pansy

Pansy grew up in St. Elizabeth in a traditional board house on family land. She came to Kingston to look for work when she was I 9 and stayed with her uncle who owned his own piece of land. She stayed here for eight years until she moved into a board house which she rented. Later she moved into her own house where she stayed for 25 years before being relocated by the Ministry of Housing to Standpipe five years ago.

She went there with most of her neighbours. The government relocation was based on a sites-and-service scheme with each family being provided with a small wooden unit and the land on which it was sited. They were relocated because the Government wanted to build a road through the area.

Pearl

Pearl moved another five times before she settled down in a house provided by the father of three of her children, but even then things didn't work out. In an attempt to become more independent and to earn money for herself Pearl got herself trained as a cashier and found a job in a bar. Her babyfather didn't like that. He tried to stop her and they fought. He threw her out of the house and she had to move back in with her father. Since then she has lived on her own and has even been to the Cayman Islands to try and find work but things have not worked out well. She is now back again living in a room in a house leased by her father.

Tenure

Tenure can be an extremely complex matter. There is a distinction for instance, between land tenure and dwelling tenure which means that ownership of a dwelling need have no correspondence with ownership of land. One of the most important findings of the study with respect to gender differences related to tenure. Female-headed households were found to be far less likely to be owners and were far more likely to be renters of both land and dwellings than the other kinds of household. This has important implications which will be explored later in this chapter.

For the moment it might be helpful to clarify some of the terms that will be used in the discussion. Most of them have been covered in the Glossary but they have been reproduced here for the sake of convenient reference.

Capturing

This is synonymous with squatting. Squatters are also often referred to as "capturers."

Family land

Family land is a form of land ownership that is based on traditional or customary law which has its origins in traditional West African practices rather than the European system of titling which was formally introduced into the Jamaican legal system with the Registration of Titles Law of 1888. To this day a large proportion of the Jamaican public remain unaware of the rules of the formal tenure system and effectively continue to rely on the older traditional system. This is particularly true in the rural areas but also apparent in the older areas of Kingston. The crucial difference between family land and individually-owned land is that family land cannot be sold to the benefit an individual member of the family as all family members have right of access to build and reside. Besson (1987) has convincingly demonstrated that family land was created by Creole society as a response to the constraints of agrarian relations and legal codes developed by the white plantocracy.

With the advent of the formal contemporary system of tenure all sorts of contradictions were introduced including the difficult problem of legitimacy in the case of families which traditionally placed little importance on the coincidence of conjugal relationships and marriage.

Lease land

Leasing is a form of long-term tenancy that is more prevalent with respect to land than it is to dwellings. It is a particularly common feature of agricultural land and is rather more common in rural than In urban areas. Typical leasing arrangements run between 5 and 30 years. Lease payments are usually made on a quarterly or annual rather than monthly basis.

Live free

This refers to a tenure relationship in which the property is not owned by the occupier, nor rented, nor leased. and which has not been captured or squatted. The classic example of living free is the inner-city occupant of a tenement yard who initially may have paid rent but who ceased to do so when the landlord effectively abandoned the property in response to Inner- city violence and political turbulence. Another example is a tenant of government owned property who benefits from the traditional blind eye of Jamaica's long-standing political patronage system.

Own

Refers to legal ownership of the land and/or dwelling. and to customary ownership which may be lacking in legal documentation. According to Edith Clarke ( 1954) there are three documents which are commonly believed to give proof of land ownership under customary as opposed to formal law. These are:

In this study if respondents said that they owned the dwelling and/or the land It was recorded as such with no formal documentary proof being requested.

Rent

Renting is a short-term tenancy arrangement with rent normally being paid on a monthly basis. Rental agreements are more common to dwellings than they are to land alone and occur within both the formal and Informal sectors. Some people rent from squatters for instance.

Spot or ground rent

An amount paid per month or per quarter for the use of the land on which someone lives in their own dwelling.

Squatting (capturing)

Squatting refers to the illegal occupation of land or dwelling. It has strong historical antecedents in Jamaica as it was the main form of land occupation used by the newly-freed slaves following emancipation and was also practiced by their ex-masters who tended to squat on the best land available in the plains. Squatting is recognized within the formal legal system and squatters have rights of undisputed possession after a period of 12 years in the case of private land and 50 years in the case of Crown land.

Yard

Yard is a very complex concept within the Jamaican context. The term is used regularly in a number of different ways:

There are no legal impediments to women owning land or property in Jamaica. However, as this study shows, there are differences in the de facto access that different kinds of households have to secure tenure. This is important because secure tenure is the most critical determining factor when a household decides whether or not to invest in the improvement and expansion of shelter, be this through a formal or informal process.

Those most likely invest in shelter improvements to their present dwellings are owners. Renters and people who are living free are unlikely to make such investments as they offer no benefit to them in the long term. Interestingly, squatters and owners exhibit very similar attitudes to home improvement and expansion. At first glance this may seem contradictory. However, there are a number of factors that make home Improvement a sound investment for squatters.

The first factor relates to land development as a means of establishing a claim to land. however tenuous. Without a building or structure that you control it is very difficult to establish that a particular piece of land "belongs" to you, whether legally or otherwise. In the case of government land squatters often argue that the more substantial the investment they have made the less likely it will be that they will be moved because of the political embarrassment that forced evictions can create. Even if they are moved, their argument for decent relocation and compensation is stronger if they have a well-developed structure.

One means of safeguarding against total destruction of a dwelling because of eviction is to make Improvements using materials that can be disassembled and rebuilt or moved intact. Lumber is therefore often a preferred building material even though it is less strong than concrete and may, if bought new, actually prove more expensive. However, "improvements" made to wooden houses can be sound investments as long as they are moveable. A third reason for improving a piece of captured land is that improvements such as pathways, latrines, retention walls, fruit trees etc. can be "sold" to the next squatter occupying the plot, even if the house is moved with the original occupier.

Significantly, female-headed households are far more likely to be renters and less likely to be owners of either land or dwelling than other kinds of households.

Female-headed households have significantly lower ownership rates than joint-headed households and much higher rental rates. The relatively high rental rates among female-headed households are important because they coincide with a number of other characteristics of female-headed households which point towards this group being caught in a poverty trap. The coincidence of rental tenure status, low saving rates, low access to formal employment, low asset levels and high dependency ratios provides the framework for the trap and the conditions for its continuity.

Table 15. Percentage of different types of households by present dwelling tenure

Type of household	Family own	Lease	Rent	Live	Free	Squat
Female-headed	28	0	0	58	13	1
Male-headed	32	0	1	51	15	1
Joint-headed	35	1	2	48	13	2
Percentage total households	32	1	1	53	13	1

Table 15 presents an overview of the situation with respect to dwelling tenure. As was the case with land, female-headed households were less likely to be owners and more likely to be renters. However, female heads of household appear as squatters with nearly the same frequency as joint heads (6 per cent of female- and male-headed households, and 7 per cent of joint-headed households proved to be land squatters). Nearly all squatters own their own houses with capturing of actual dwellings proving an extremely rare phenomenon, hence the low incidence in table 15. This finding is contrary to the historical belief that single males have the highest prevalence in squatter areas and may reflect actual increases in squatting rates for women. It would be interesting to know which women opt for a squatting shelter solution as it is by no means an easy option for low-income households with few human and material resources.

Capturing land involves investing resources in fencing or wiring off the land, building a basic unit, cutting a pathway, building a latrine and so on. None of this can be done effectively without the necessary resources. If one does not have the necessary resources one simply cannot do it. Deula's story related in the chapter on the building process, provides a good example of how a claim fails to hold up because of an insufficient investment of resources.

Observations by the author suggest that female heads of household who squat tend to do so when they have adult male relatives, usually sons or brothers, who can provide the physical assistance that is necessary to stake a claim and maintain it. Women with young children and no available adult relatives seem only to resort to squatting out of total desperation. One way of staking a claim, for instance, is to live under a piece of plastic sheeting or a few pieces of corrugated iron sheeting and make the claim through personal presence.

The advantage of developing shelter within the informal sector is that cash costs are considerably lower than in the formal sector and this allows for saving which in turn allows for expenditure patterns that can support long-term investment rather than day-to-day subsistence spending. Such investment offers a means of escape from the vicious cycle of poverty in which many female-headed households are trapped. However. relatively few female-headed households appear to be in a position to pursue this option as a means of escape from the rental market.

Some 17.9 per cent of joint-headed households had moved to their present land because they had bought it. This was true of 13.5 per cent of male-headed households but only 1 1.1 per cent of female-headed households, yet again reflecting the low ownership levels of female-headed households.

Also, 18.3 per cent of joint-headed households had built as had 17.6 per cent of male-headed households. This compares with only 13 per cent of female-headed households. With regard to rental as a means of obtaining a house the situation was reversed with 57 per cent of female-headed households indicating that this was the case, compared with 54 per cent for male-headed households and 50.6 per cent for joint-headed households.

The study looked at respondents previous land tenure. This provided some interesting results which are summarized in table 16.

The previous tenure indicated by respondents is dominated by rental and family ownership of land. There are lower levels of squatting than in the current situation while the rates of living free have remained essentially similar. There are no significant differences with regard to the type of household. This pattern is almost certainly the result of a predominantly rural shelter situation. It appears that household differences with respect to tenure only emerge within the urban situation where female-headed households also tend to be far more prevalent that they are in the rural areas.

Table 16. Percentage of different types of household by previous land tenure

Type of household	Form of land tenure
	Own	Family	Lease	Rent free	Live	Squat
Female-headed	6	14	4	53	23	0
Male-headed	7	13	5	55	20	1
Joint-headed	6	12	4	54	22	2
Overall	6	13	4	54	22	1

The differences between different types of household found with respect to current land tenure were also reflected in the patterns of additional land and dwelling ownership. Female-headed households were less likely to be buying or to own land or a dwelling in a place other than their current location than the two other types of household. The relevant information is summarized in table 17.

Table 17. Percentage of different types of households owning and/or buying land and/or house elsewhere

Type of household	Own land/house elsewhere	Buying land/house elsewhere
Female-headed	9.9	4.2
Male-headed	11.5	4.8
Joint-headed	13.5	7.8