Squatting has become a worldwide issue, with an estimated number of one billion squatters across the globe. In every case study, squatters share one common trait - the search for a better quality of life. Relocating to urban areas has become an alleged solution to improve the quality of life and provide better income for the household. This movement stimulated a substantial flow of migrants to cities. However, their migration has only caused them another dilemma: adequate housing. In most cases, these migrants are financially incapable, leaving them their only option which is to illegally reside on unoccupied land. They all go to the cities in search of fortune, but they end up in squatter communities.
A squatter settlement is identified by the lack of ownership of the land in which their houses are built. Squatter communities are located on vacant lands that can be private or government owned. In either case, there is no permission or contract in which the dwellers are given the consents to build their shelters and live on these properties. These settlements are usually located along rivers and creeks, in garbage dumps, along railroad tracks, under bridges, beside factories, and other undesirable location that have not officially be settled.
Due to their remote locations and lack of amenities, establishing a squatter settlement is very hard labor intensive work. More often than not, the land that the squatters are trying to claim is undesirable for one reason or another. Take the squatter settlement of Rochina, Brazil: prior to the arrival of the squatters the hills and mountains remained uninhabited for centuries. They were thought to be too steep, too rocky, and too densely forested to be developed. Despite all these obstacles, when the need became great enough, the hills were the first place the squatters claimed (Pg 31). .
The squatters claimed the hills that had been vacant for centuries, through painstaking work, dragging all their building materials up the hills and taming the dense rain forest.
