The Value of Ownership

Last Sunday I had the wonderful opportunity to go out into the communities with my friend Mark (an American volunteer) and help Timette, a resident of La Croix and father of three students in the La Croix school system, patch his roof. Mark and his wife sponsor Timette’s children at La Croix, and the other week when Mark meet Timette, he saw that his roof was leaking, and Mark (being a builder from Vermont) decided to help. I tagged along to lend a hand and see a little more of the countryside.

Haitian communities are organized by Lakous. Each Lakou is a collection of homes surrounded by fields. Each Lakou varies in size, anywhere between five or six families all the way to a few dozen families. They are the Haitian equivalent of American neighborhoods. There are some stark differences, most Lakous don’t have paved roads, but they serve a similar social purpose that neighborhoods serve in the US.  Most homes out in the Lakous are mud huts. They have wooden sticks as a foundation, which mud is heaped on to form the walls, and the roofs are made from thatched straw or corrugated tin. The homes will have windows and doors, and there are walls breaking the house up into different rooms. These dwellings do not have any electrical capabilities or plumbing. Some of the homes are made with concrete or cinder blocks, but those are the nicer houses and they are few and far between. Most homes will have a separate smaller hut on the side where the food is stored and prepared. This hut is usually elevated off the ground to prevent rats and roaches from getting to the food. The houses aren’t organized around one central fixture, there is no street leading to each hut, so they are situated every which way within the Lakou. Some are facing others, while some are a little ways away from the central part of the Lakou.

These homes provide shelter, but they don’t provide much else. Most people just sleep and store their possessions in their homes, most of their time in the Lakou is spent outside of their house. Outside there is a constant buzz of small children playing with each other, and most teenagers and adults sit right outside of their houses on chairs thatched together with straw and twine. The women can be seen milling about, getting water, washing the clothes, and cooking food. Though the houses are very basic and not very comfortable, the Lakou environment is quite communal, and feels very similar to my college dorm room during my freshman year of college. Everyone has their own personal place, but they spend most of their time hanging out with each other. 

One of the biggest issues facing Haitian homeowners is that they don’t actually own their homes. They occupy the land and there is a social contract between them and their neighbors that their possessions will be respected, but there is no formal deed that gives people a right to their own land. This may seem like a small legal faux pas on the part of the Haitian legal system, but it has serious economic implications and is one of the greatest hindrances keeping Haiti from developing.

Most American homeowners can’t afford to buy their home with their personal liquid assets, we don’t have 300K lying around in a bank account, so we take out a loan or a mortgage. The house itself is put up as collateral for the mortgage, so if we default on the mortgage the bank can claim our home. We can use the house as collateral because we own the house, we have a piece of paper that gives us the legal right to occupy the home, and thus use it as collateral. As Americans we can borrow money not only purchase our house but to improve the current layout of our home. Improving the plumbing or electrical layout in a home can be expensive, but we can afford do it because we can borrow for the improvement, using the house as collateral.

Haitians, not having proper ownership of their homes and thus not being able to take money out against their homes, they can only build or improve what they pay for out of pocket, and that’s not much. This is why so many Haitians have thatched roofs and mud walls; these building materials don’t really cost anything. Haitians only have access to the materials they can buy outright. Installing a flushing toilet or electricity would be a huge expense. It would require not only a toilet, but the house would to be fitted with water pipes, and the time of a skilled plumber to install everything. Most Haitians or Americans can’t afford this type of expense outright, but Americans can still afford it through borrowing money and using their house for collateral. Haitians, not having legitimate property rights, aren’t able to access these utilities, keeping them in a constant state of poverty. There are many houses in the Lakous that are half built. They are half built because someone only had enough money at the time to pay for part of the house to be built. When they get more money, they build on, but they can’t afford to build everything all at once. If building a house has to be done drawn out long phases, imagine how long installing proper electrical utilities would take.

This is a huge impediment to improving Haiti’s standard of living. If Haitians can only purchase what they have the liquid assets to purchase, they’ll never be able to by anything worth more than a few hundred dollars. They can make some marginal improvements to their homes; one of the initiatives the mission has supported is composting toilets. These are toilets that basically function as outhouses, except the excrement goes into a chamber filled with other organic material that composts it. They don’t flush, but they are more sanitary than regular latrines. These improvements do improve the Haitians standard of living in a small way, but they can only improve so much. No amount of composting toilets will compare with the benefits of running water.

This issue is one of the distinct forces keeping Haiti poor, and there is no clear solution. The government has tried to implement property rights for the rural areas, but the division of land is not very straightforward, leaving a lot of room open for corruption. If you are interested, there is a story from This American Life that chronicles the problems with property rights in Haiti. The episode is titled Island Time and I would highly recommend it. Property rights, however boring they may be, allow us to afford the high standard of living we have in the US. This type of problem is not unique to Haiti, but plagues much of the developing world. If Haiti could figure some way to fairly and equitably appropriate property to rural Haitians, the country could really take off. Though there isn’t a clear direction for this, it has been done in the past, and I am hopeful that Haiti can do it in the future.