The government’s looming deadline to eradicate all informal settlements by 2014 has seen it establish a new housing development agency to step up the delivery of houses.
At a media briefing on Thursday, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu announced that the agency would manage and co-ordinate the development of housing across the country.
The agency would also help to identify and purchase land for housing development.
Sisulu said developers and the banking sector found it difficult to build low-income housing because of the slow pace of approval from local and provincial governments.
In some cases it took as much as three years to get the nod from the authorities to go ahead and begin building.
The housing minister admitted that some municipalities had been slow in delivering land-availability agreements to developers and that in most cases, municipalities did not have the capacity to facilitate housing delivery.
Sisulu said the N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town proved that in order to ensure the fast-track delivery of housing, the responsibility for it would have to be located at provincial government level.
“We have found that over the past year we have not been able to proceed at the pace that we wanted to on the N2 because the city had not given the land-availability agreement on which we were dependent. That finally has been done a few days ago,” she said.
“If we can be held up as government, you can imagine what it is like for a private developer.”
The construction industry, straining under the pressure of delivering the infrastructure required for the 2010 World Cup, threatened the delivery of housing even though it was a constitutional requirement, the minister added.
Her department was working with the 2010 organising committee, and also liaising with other governments with a view to the importing of materials needed to build houses. The Star
At a media briefing on Thursday, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu announced that the agency would manage and co-ordinate the development of housing across the country.
The agency would also help to identify and purchase land for housing development.
Sisulu said developers and the banking sector found it difficult to build low-income housing because of the slow pace of approval from local and provincial governments.
In some cases it took as much as three years to get the nod from the authorities to go ahead and begin building.
The housing minister admitted that some municipalities had been slow in delivering land-availability agreements to developers and that in most cases, municipalities did not have the capacity to facilitate housing delivery.
Sisulu said the N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town proved that in order to ensure the fast-track delivery of housing, the responsibility for it would have to be located at provincial government level.
“We have found that over the past year we have not been able to proceed at the pace that we wanted to on the N2 because the city had not given the land-availability agreement on which we were dependent. That finally has been done a few days ago,” she said.
“If we can be held up as government, you can imagine what it is like for a private developer.”
The construction industry, straining under the pressure of delivering the infrastructure required for the 2010 World Cup, threatened the delivery of housing even though it was a constitutional requirement, the minister added.
Her department was working with the 2010 organising committee, and also liaising with other governments with a view to the importing of materials needed to build houses. The Star
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