Insecure land tenure in the urban areas of Minas Gerais

Abstract This paper discusses characteristics of the insecure land tenure in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, by using data from the Sample Survey of Minas Gerais Household (PAD-MG) of 2013. This survey presents specific questions on this subject for the first time in Brazil. We analyze aspects of land ownership of the urban owned households regarding the existence of different types of titles and their official register with relation to housing types, location in subnormal areas, construction standards, infrastructure provision, public or private titling and other features. We identified the amount of urban households with insecure land tenure and that it is spread over the entire stock of urban households, not only over the subnormal settlements. We also found that there is no interdependence between unsafe land ownership and house or settlement precariousness. In addition, we found that about 50% of insecure land tenure is mainly related to titles that lack formal registration.