Impacts of Informal Settlements on Housing Development: The Case of Debre Berhan Town, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

The issue of inadequate housing is the difficulty that millions of lower and middle-income groups in urban areas of the developing world face. This study is an assessment of informal settlements and its impacts on housing developments in Debre Berhan town. The core problem identified in this research is the uncontrollable illegal division of lands for substandard housing. The study aimed to examine the characteristics informal settlements focusing on housing standards, causes of Informal settlements including their impacts in the housing developments, the different modes of informal land acquisition mechanisms, evaluating the legal responses for informal settlers to solve these impacts and to propose a possible preventive and curative solution for the informal settlement expansion in the town. The research design employed in the study was a mixed type and the combination of probability and purposive sampling techniques were used. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from primary and secondary sources, and the methods of data collection from primary were direct observation, interviews, field questionnaire surveys, and instrumental use. The result of the study of informal settlements in the town was characterized by legal, socioeconomic, and environment due to the inefficiency of the formal land supply process, to deliver adequate land for housing, population growth, urbanization, socio-cultural factors, and others. And the major mechanisms of informal land acquired through purchasing lands from informal land market and inheritance. The physical, social, political, and environmental problems were the impacts that are caused by informal settlements and the local government’s response was regulating and demolition. The study recommended the entire land development and management system to address vital areas of strategic physical planning, cadastral surveying, land recording and registration, and well-managed land information system to improve the land availability factor in the town and help to control informal settlements. This research will have a positive contribution to promoting the realization of the right to adequate housing with security of tenure for informal settlements in Debre Berhan town.