Costa Rica News – I guess squatters rights only apply to privately purchased land in Costa Rica. Come on Costa Rica government keep consistency when enforcing laws. Oh wait! they have a loop hole that they are using in this case, my bad! According to Costa Rican law, a person can acquire rights to a property if the property owner allows that person to use or maintain possession of the property for more than a year. Once the property has been acquired it cannot be taken away, except for reasons such as eminent domain, and then only with proper compensation.
In this case I am assuming they are using eminent domain as their loop hole. Forces began this morning the eviction of 96 families that allegedly invaded land purchased by the National Emergency Commission (CNE), in La Loma de Parrita.
Here is the kicker…..The land was allocated to the construction of social housing for victims of Hurricane Mitch . Ok this does not sound bad except if you have the information that Hurricane Mitch hit Costa Rica in late October 1998. So in 14 years they still have not built this social housing but now they are kicking off the squatters. If these people were on some foreign investors land for that long it would long ago been in that squatters name.
Randall Picado, regional director of the security forces, said the eviction order was issued a week ago, but with the scale of the operation, it must be coordinated over several days.
After this process, the land will be transferred to the Housing Mortgage Bank (BANHVI) to develop a proposed relocation of families affected by floods, the Commission explained through a press release. Yeah because it took 14 years for them to build nothing for Hurricane Mitch now they are going to build housing for flood victims. So kick out people on the land to make them homeless to not build homes for those that lost their homes in the floods. Awesome!
CNE filed a complaint for actions that could constitute the crime of illegal construction and violation of the seal on the farm, the statement said. What should be filed is a complaint of the government never doing what they said for Hurricane Mitch victims.
