"Once the resident's (property) right is registered it can be pledged as a bank guarantee, increasing access to credit," Silvio Figueiredo, director of urban affairs for Brazil's Ministry of Cities, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "A number of benefits are guaranteed from urban land regularization. "Informality in big cities is rampant," Fernandes told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Land rights analysts generally support the idea of improving formal property ownership for the urban poor but some question the government's priorities. "Getting formal titles is not a high priority for (favela) residents," said Tais Borges, an urban planner at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who has worked with the Brazilian government on property regularization. "The biggest complaints are sewage and parking," she said.The government should focus first on building infrastructure and connecting services for poor communities and then work on regularizing land titles, Borges said.For example, favela communities need postcodes so mail can be delivered and to make it easier for residents to apply for jobs, she said, adding that these basic facilities are needed more than formal property titles.Currently, most favela properties are bought and sold informally - often among friends and neighbours - because they are not officially registered by the government, analysts said.

Source: The Star January 28, 2017 16:52 UTC