Jakarta has been experiencing rapid urbanization and severe housing shortage, especially for the under privileged. This condition breeds slum, or kampong in Indonesia, as solution to provide affordable housing. In the absence of right of ownership, as the basis of objective secure tenure, kampong dwellers have been delivering self-help house improvements. It proves subjective tenure security, as alternative of objective tenure security, encourages self-help housing. The research aims are identifying the general condition of landownership, the other factors of subjective tenure security that become impediment of land titling program and its implication to house condition in Kampong Cikini, Jakarta, as the research area. The information was obtained from 79 respondents by utilizing snowball technique sampling. The findings indicated only small numbers of respondents obtained right of ownership, while most of respondents claimed landownership based on documents that referred to colonial, customary and religion laws. It described inadequate knowledge of the land regulation of kampong dwellers, following by expensive and complicated procedure, as the impediment of land titling program. Escalating land price, kampong improvements programs and support from political parties become other factors that strengthen subjective tenure security which encourage self-help house improvements. This research is not only complemented the existing theory of subjective tenure security but also demonstrated how the intricate tenure security and its implication to self-help housing improvements in kampong settlement. It will useful on refining the the new implemented intervention to improve kampong without degrading formal land titling program.