Do tenants get compensation when a project takes the building?

Yes — under IFC PS-5 and World Bank ESS-5, tenants are entitled to compensation and resettlement assistance in their own right. Under most national expropriation law they are not, because the law compensates interests in land and a tenant holds none. On a lender-financed project the standards apply, and being left out is usually a recording failure rather than a decision.

What a tenant loses, and is owed for

• Occupancy — the cost of finding and securing alternative accommodation, including the deposit and advance rent almost every landlord requires.
• Moving costs, and transitional support while re-establishing.
• Any improvement you paid for — a room you added, a floor you laid, a shopfront, a water connection.
• A rent differential where comparable premises nearby cost more than you were paying — which is common, because the affordable stock is what the project just removed.
• Business losses if you traded from the premises: lost income during the move and the cost of re-establishing elsewhere.[2]

Why tenants get missed

The census form is usually built around one household per structure, and the enumerator interviews whoever is present. Landlords are often absent and get identified from documents; tenants get recorded as household members, or not at all.[3]

A second reason is that tenants frequently do not think they are entitled to anything, so they do not push to be recorded. On a lender-financed project that assumption is wrong.

The building belongs to the landlord. The home, the business and the displacement are yours.

What to do

1. Make sure you are enumerated separately, in your own name, with your claim type recorded as tenant — not as a member of the owner's household.
2. Record what you built or paid for, with photographs, at the time of the survey.
3. Keep evidence of the tenancy — receipts, a written agreement if one exists, or corroboration from neighbours who are themselves on the register.
4. Ask to be paid directly. Your entitlement is yours; it does not pass through the landlord.[1]
5. If your landlord evicts you after the cut-off date to strengthen their own claim, raise it as a grievance immediately — being removed does not extinguish an entitlement already recorded.[4]

Sub-tenants and rooms within rooms

In dense settlements there may be an absentee owner, a principal tenant and several sub-tenants at one address. All of them are displaced. A register that can only hold one name per structure will record one of them, so ask specifically whether the survey allows more than one claim per address — and if it does not, put your claim in writing.