N2 Gateway construction halted

Building ground to a halt at the N2 Gateway in Delft on Thursday when sub-contractors downed tools over money.

The protest by 60 sub-contractors caused yet another delay to the national government’s low-cost flagship housing project.

Protesting workers claimed the consortium that won the main contract, Buyile, was short-changing them. They presented their grievances to Thubelisha, the agency that manages the multimillion project on behalf of the national Department of Housing.

Thubelisha hastily convened a meeting with a steering committee representing the disgruntled sub-contractors on Thursday afternoon.

The agency’s Prince Maluleke said Thubelisha ought not to get involved in the dispute between the sub-contractors and the main contractors, but the company had intervened to ensure there were no further delays.

The meeting ended without any solution and a follow-up meeting was scheduled for Monday.

Spokesperson for the steering committee, Nicholas Maziya, said the main gripe was over payment.

“The sub-contractors are being exploited. We even wrote letters to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi about what is happening on the site,” he said…

The department of housing took over the project from the City of Cape Town last year after it accusing the city of causing the delays and building sub-standard housing.

Patrick Mackenzie, chairperson of the provincial standing committee on housing in the Western Cape legislature, condemned the delays and said it was not the first time construction had been halted because of disputes over payment.

Mackenzie, who toured the project with the national assembly’s portfolio committee of housing earlier this month, blamed problems on a “lack of political management”.

“I am also concerned with Thubelisha being both player and referee by managing the allocation of houses and collection of rentals,” he said.

He also slammed the size of the completed houses as too small: “During the imbizo, some people said they would rather stay in their shacks than move into the finished houses. The houses are unacceptable. The bedrooms are so small a bed takes up the whole space.” - Cape Times

Western Cape faces yet another housing debacle

The Western Cape is facing yet another housing debacle. Farmworkers from a town nearby Franshhoek are refusing to move into homes built especially for them. They say the homes are of a poor quality.

Anglo-American Farms is disputing this, saying the housing development has received international recognition. Last year the project won the Southern African Housing Foundation’s Special Merit Award.

Hundreds of families have already moved in but 20 remaining families are refusing to move in. Their reasons include cracked walls, weak ceilings, exposed electrical wires, poor foundations, and roofs that fly off when the wind blows.

While the workers cite a list of reasons for their unhappiness, Anglo American Farms say they are very proud of the project though they will have to address these concerns. Don Tooth, the managing director of Anglo American Farms, says the situation has to be investigated.

The Cape Winelands District Municipality also says it wants to convene a meeting with the stakeholders to verify its contractual obligations. - SABC

Housing backlog at 2.4m units

Pretoria - The backlog of housing currently stands at 2.4 million houses across South Africa, and the government hopes to reduce or do away with the shortfall by 2014.

“Yes, there is a problem with the backlog,” housing director-general Itumeleng Kotsoane said in an interview in Pretoria on Thursday.

Kotsoane detailed the obstacles faced in the housing sector and outlined current plans to tackle the problem.

He said the government built around 250,000 houses a year, and 2.3 million houses had been built since 1994.

However, many South Africans tended to gloss over the issue of backlogs in the housing department without putting the matter into context.

“Historically policies of the previous government excluded African people from having access to land for housing and when the takeover took place in 1994, we knew drastic measures were needed.

“We didn’t understand the depth of need by people and recently when we reviewed progress made in the past ten years, we found that gaps in our delivery process had to do with planning,” he said.

“Poor construction work and availability of land are some of the hindrances we have in the delivery programme but we are on target.”

Government is in the process of finalising the policy for Inclusionary Housing which will see low cost houses being built in the same area as high cost housing.

There are currently ten programmes which have integrated this system, with one being launched next to the R59 in Pretoria on Friday.

Kotsoane said research done in the US and United Kingdom showed that these countries had implemented Inclusionary Housing.

“It is possible for people to live together in harmony irrespective of race and class,” he said.

On whether such a plan would work in South Africa, Kotsoane said: “It must work. It’s going to be legislation enforced by law.”

Inclusionary Housing will be applicable irrespective of whether or not the land is privately owned.

While people argue about putting the poor and rich next to each other, most dwellers in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses complain that government-built houses are falling apart.

The problem started when big developers in 1998 moved out of the low cost housing market.

Kotsoane said these were replaced by emerging contractors who occupied their space and their “quality of work wasn’t up to scratch”.

“We are in the process of correcting this with the help of the National Home Builders Registration Council and each province is busy with audits on the damage of houses.”

Provinces like Gauteng, Limpopo have already started with the audits.

“We will only be looking at the houses that became defective as a result of poor workmanship.”

He said owners of RDP houses needed to be aware that regardless of whether the house was free, it was an asset and the value of it was based on how one took care of it.

“We need to educate people about title deeds and about what they mean and that having a house is a great asset as property appreciates over time,” Kotsoane said. - SAPA

Government short-sighted in dealing with poverty

If programmes to alleviate poverty are to have any real impact, they have to be sustainable beyond “the first generation” so that the children of the poor stood a chance of improving their lives.

In a paper delivered at the Living on the Margins conference at Spier, University of Cape Town poverty researchers, Sue Parnell and Edgar Pieterse, said the government was short-sighted in its attempts to help the poor.

“There is no question the political will to help the poor exists,” Parnell said. “What is a problem, is that many of the steps being taken now will not improve the lives of future generations of the poor.”

She said the Development Facilitation Act allows for compromises on the usual laws that govern the establishment of communities in areas zoned for low-cost housing.

“It makes it legal to cut corners to keep costs down.”

While this introduced a host of controversial issues in the development of low-cost housing, Parnell and Pieterse’s concern is that the act unwittingly maintained the status quo with the poor destined to remain poor despite the attempt at a leg-up by government.

“Any relevant development by the formal sector within these communities becomes impossible because the infrastructure to support development doesn’t exist or has been compromised.

“A major shopping chain couldn’t build a complex within a low-cost community because, for example, the pipes used for sewerage might be to small to support the development,” Parnell said.

People living in new low-cost communities were destined to a life of spaza shops and street trading, never enjoying the benefits of the first economy. - Cape Times

Housing office closure angers residents

Supporters of the Proudly Manenberg campaign say they will protest against the City of Cape Town if it closes the housing office in Manenberg Avenue on Monday.

And Mario Wanza, chairperson of Proudly Manenberg, has called for an urgent meeting with Mayor Helen Zille, after hearing that the city decided to close the office because of escalating gang violence in the area.

“I am disappointed in the mayor. We met with them (the city) on Thursday and at no point did they indicate they would be closing the office.”

Wanza, who was told of the office’s closure when contacted by media on Sunday for comment, said representatives of the campaign had objected at the meeting to the proposal to close the office.

“There are 70,000 residents there who cannot just pull out of Manenberg. The government is supposed to be dealing with the issues of crime and violence, not running away.”

Wanza said the organisation had agreed that a police satellite office would be set up near the housing office. He said there was also talk of deploying metro police to the area.

“But this is contrary to what we agreed. I am shocked.”

The city has said the decision to temporarily close the office was “not taken lightly”. But increasing violence, that sometimes forced staff to hide under their desks for cover, prompted the council to take drastic measures… - Cape Times

Shacks burn down near Cape Town

Ten shacks were burnt down at the Dunoon informal settlements in Milnerton, Cape Town, SABC news reported on Sunday.

The Cape Town fire department said that the blaze occurred early Sunday morning and was quickly brought under control.

No one was injured. About 30 people were displaced and accommodated with friends and family. The cause of the fire was still be investigated. - Sapa

N2 Gateway: things fall apart

The N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town is literally cracking up and in some places falling apart because of substandard workmanship. The Rental Tribunal Office in Cape Town has confirmed that it is “inundated by complaints” from resi­dents who moved into the housing complex less than six months ago.

This week, Xhanti Sigcawu, the general manager of Thubelisha Homes, the project managers for the N2 Gateway housing project, confirmed that although tenants have moved in and are paying full rent for their units, they have not yet signed off on the completion certificate because of “unhappiness with the standard of the work”.

“We’re retaining 5% of the total money to be paid to Sobambisana, the project’s largest consortium, until we’re happy with final completion,” Sigcawu said. Sobambisana has accepted liability and is apparently going “to fix” problems at the government’s flagship housing project. Sobambisana did not respond to questions this week.

According to the N2 residents’ committee, every tenant living in the flats has either already filed a complaint with the Rental Tribunal Office or is in the process of doing so. “We’ve delivered hundreds of complaints to this office and still need to deliver about 200 more,” said Luthando Ndabambi, of the tenants committee, this week.

The Rental Tribunal Office’s deputy director, Andre Rossouw, confirmed that it had received “more than 100 complaints and we’re excepting more”. Rossouw could not say whether complainants are pursuing legal action against the department of housing or are still trying to resolve the matter out of court.

Riedwaan Davids, the N2 Gateway’s project manager, who is employed by Thubelisha Homes, said that the company had attended to “about 1 000 complaints” — while there are only 705 units in the complex.

This week a Cape Town city civil engineer and professional construction manager accompanied the Mail & Guardian to the housing development and said the workmanship was “shocking and substandard”.

The engineer, who wants to remain anonymous, visited numerous units and walked through the entire complex: “Some of the walls I’ve seen need to be rebuilt because it was clearly built without brick-force, which re-enforces walls. No steel-stiffeners, as re-enforcement, were used in a lot of the walls, meaning that the walls will probably not last for a long time — it’s also dangerous because these walls are only one brick-layer thick and if an adult runs into it, it could collapse. Some of the building work done, is simply done wrongly and cannot be fixed — it will have to be re-built,” the engineer said.

“I’m seeing cracks that one should only start seeing after three or four years. Corners were cut; the builders were probably in a hurry and I’m guessing there was very little supervision happening while the building was in progress,” he added.

Most of the complaints from residents are about substandard plumbing. In one unit a toilet pipe leaks effluent water every time the toilet is flushed, flooding that unit as well as the one next door. Unless the units’ front doors are open, both houses reek of sewerage.

The project, which was supposed to provide 22,000 new housing units to shack-dwellers by June last year, has thus far delivered only 705 units. Few of these units are housing squatters because the enormous costs involved in the construction have made the rent — which is between R450 and R1 150 a month — unaffordable by most homeless and unemployed people on housing waiting lists.

Thus far the expenditure overrun on the N2 housing project is estimated at R135-million. Each unit was budgeted to cost R80 000 but upon completion by the middle of last year, the cost had escalated to more than R130 000 per unit.

In response to the M&G’s questions about the project, the department of housing seconded several senior staff members to a meeting at the N2 project site.

Saths Moodley, special adviser to housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu, said: “Minister Sisulu demands that this entire N2 process should be completely transparent. This is a flagship-project. The issue of building standards is serious. If people didn’t do their work, they will be fired. Somebody should be listening to the tenants and taking their complaints seriously. Minister Sisulu will indeed be very angry to hear about this state of affairs.” M&G

Build 75 000 houses every year, says YCL

The City of Cape Town must plough most of its funds into building 75,000 houses every year to drastically reduce Cape Town’s housing backlog, the Young Communist League (YCL) said.

In a memorandum to the council, the SA Communist Party youth wing said that,

if billions of rands could be allocated to build a stadium, the council could afford (to build) decent houses instead of the small ones built in areas such as Delft and Khayelitsha.

The memorandum was received by Dan Plato, mayoral committee member for housing, after a YCL protest march through Cape Town on Thursday.

The organisation claimed it represented the interests of working-class youth in the Western Cape and that most of them were homeless, lived in shacks or poorly built houses which were worse than those built under apartheid.

“The YCL demands decent housing, departure of apartheid spatial planning, further expansion of the N2 Gateway and the immediate stop to the building of ooVezinyawo houses,” the memorandum read. “These ooVezinyawo (meaning ’show your feet while sleeping’) houses are so tiny, people think they were built for a particular use and not for domicile. They remove the privacy and dignity of people.”

YCL Hout Bay branch secretary Lovers Magwala said many families struggled with overcrowding which resulted in domestic problems. “Our appeal is that the city and the national government build decent structures … The constant politicking between the council and provincial government does not interest us. One of our main concerns is that people get decent houses and service delivery takes place.”

Plato told the 57 marchers that the council was busy improving its services, such as (getting rid of) the bucket system and the general upgrading of informal settlements.

With reference to the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement in Hout Bay, he said processes were in place to deal with housing problems there, as well as in other areas.

“We have 240 informal settlements in Cape Town and we don’t want to single out specific informal settlements. We try to look at informal settlements in a holistic manner and want to deal with the problem holistically,” Plato said. - Cape Times

Corruption is a crime against the poor

“Corruption is about the abuse of entrusted power and office for illegitimate, illegal private gain and is costing South Africa between R50 billion and R150 billion per year, money that could be used for housing, unemployment, and other social services.

Corruption undermines revenue collection and stimulates the underground economy. The more we allow this underground or informal economy to thrive, the more serious the consequences in terms of the amount of money the country is able to generate, which eventually gets redistributed or channelled into service delivery projects, into health, housing, education, pensions etc. Public resources are wasted through corruption.

In terms of social development, the Department of Social Development has been actively aggressive in terms of rooting out corruption within the department, after noticing that an estimated R1.4 billion was being lost to the department over a number of years. In spite of that amount being lost, the amount that was actually being spent on pensions, was increasing in the years. The country has to accommodate the amount of money that it is losing to corruption as well as trying to increase the provision and delivery of social security or social assistance to those most in need.

Corruption undermines efficiency and exacerbates poverty and inequality and encourages corrupt practice in the informal economy as well. One feels that you have no choice but to engage in corruption because you won’t get anywhere if you don’t, and the problem is once you start, you can’t stop.

The problem with corruption is that it impacts indirectly and directly on the poor. - Legalbrief

Cape to crack down on shacks

In a move aimed at combating the building of shacks in open public spaces, the city had vowed “to take swift action each time the unlawful occupation of land takes place”.

Following the dismantling of the “illegally” built shacks of 18 Joe Slovo Park families living in a stormwater retention compound in Milnerton on Wednesday night, the city’s human settlement services director Seth Maqethuka said it could not condone unlawful land invasions.

“The city does not offer unlawful land invaders halls, tents or alternative land. The city cannot condone unlawful land invasions by issuing starter packs. We have not done so in the past,” said Maqethuka.

The breaking down of the shacks by the City of Cape Town’s land invasion unit left the families collecting their belongings and scrambling for a place to sleep.

On Thursday night the city ward councillor for the Joe Slovo Park area, Elizabeth Berry of the DA, said: “That is my area, but I never heard anything about that.”

A committee member for the area, Patricia Mahitsha, condemned officials of the city’s land invasion unit for not issuing a warning and for conducting their action just after sunset.

But Maqethuka replied: “There was no need [for a warning] in this case as when our staff arrived on the scene, they [the shack dwellers] started removing their belongings themselves.

“We assume that they knew what they were doing was illegal as we have had previous actions of this sort in this area.”

However, Maqethuka said that, in the normal case of events, the city does warn unlawful occupants of land that their actions are illegal and that the city would take measures against them.

A city official in the housing unit, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the city’s no-nonsense approach to land invasions would be the start of a “very hard but effective process” in controlling land.

“The tough action against Joe Slovo residents would set a precedent for whoever intends doing likewise in future. People are clever - they had just arrived in the city, then they occupy any open space hoping to be prioritised by the city when it comes to housing or land allocation.

“What about the thousands of homeless who have been waiting for years in the midst of this staggering housing backlog of more than 350,000 units? Any preferential treatment to them would sound very unfair to others. The bottom line is that people must know there is limited land and more people are wanting a roof over their heads,” said the official. - Cape Argus

‘Housing delivery needs help’

Johannesburg - The “dismal” state of housing delivery in the Eastern Cape needs national intervention, said a public watchdog organisation on Tuesday.

Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) researcher Chantelle de Nobrega said the province would not meet a nationally set target to eradicate informal settlements by 2014 without help.

De Nobrega said: “The Eastern Cape will contribute little towards achieving this target unless the national department of housing takes decisive steps to intervene and improve the dismal service delivery record of the provincial department of housing, local government and traditional affairs.”

The department would get a 24% budget increase in 2007/08 to R1.57bn - which included a 37.8% housing conditional grant increase and a 34.26% increase for housing.

However, money was not the answer to “the housing delivery crisis”, added de Nobrega.

Third quarter spending results for 2006/07 had demonstrated the department’s “inability to effectively manage its finances and spend money allocated to it for the building of houses”, she said.

Department uses half of budget

By the third quarter, the department had spent 49.32% of its budget when it should have spent roughly 75%.

In addition, only 38.2% or R291m of its R762m conditional grant allocation, had been spent by the same period.

“Increasing its budget is therefore unlikely to result in more houses being built,” she added.

Long-standing systemic problems included poor planning, monitoring and evaluation systems, and weak human resource management, said de Nobrega.

Most of the province’s 400 housing projects in the province were “blocked” or stalled, as recently indicated by the provincial treasury’s superintendent-general Newman Kusi.

Department ‘doing too little’

De Nobrega said: “The department has done little to progressively realise access to adequate housing.

“Without national intervention, it will do little to contribute to the ambitious target of 2014.”

National housing department spokesperson Monwabisi Maclean said the department would look at the issues raised by PSAM, the province’s performance, and whether a need for intervention existed.

He said: “The department works with all the provinces at various levels and on various issues.”

The provincial department’s spokesperson Mbulelo Linda said the department was addressing a number of housing issues.

‘We’re on track’

These included blocked housing projects, municipal capacity shortfalls and emerging contractors.

“We’re on track in terms of dealing with the problems that we have highlighted,” added Maclean.

Both departments said they had not seen the PSAM statement. SAPA

Unhappy Valley

About 40 minutes from Cape Town, close to Kuils River, a Coca-Cola sign cheerfully announces: “Welcome to Happy Valley.” The notice is a tad misleading, judging from the daily queue outside the Afrika Breadline soup kitchen, the blocked toilets and the streets of wood and plastic shacks.

Happy Valley is one of two “temporary relocation areas” housing some of Cape Town’s half a million homeless people.

“They mean welcome to Cape Town’s dump. All the spare and homeless kaffirs and hotnots are dumped here with a starter pack and promises of a house,” says Kleintjie Mayosi, a shack dweller who has been on a housing list for more than 10 years.

The “starter pack” is a council-issued kit for half a shack comprising 10 untreated wooden poles, five corrugated iron sheets, 15m of black plastic sheeting and 1,5kg of nails, all valued at R800.

Council officials say they cannot give people a full kit because, at R3200, it’s too expensive. “Then everybody in the world will flock here. Nobody will want to build their own house; they’ll just wait for government handouts,” says mayoral committee member for housing, Dan Plato.

Happy Valley is home to about 2400 families and 80% of the adults are unemployed. Although it is supposedly a short-term reception area, families hailing from all Cape Town’s townships have been living on these Port Jackson willow-infested dunes for 12 years or more.

After building 730 one- and two-bedroom houses, the former ANC council decided to use it for the “reception” of destitute people evicted by a court or living in illegal shacks in the city. The idea was also to house immigrants from the Eastern Cape and elsewhere until they found permanent shelter.

Plato admits the promise of housing is used to induce people to move. “Housing is the carrot we use, and we make sure they get on a housing list once they relocate to Happy Valley. We give them a serviced site until council can provide them with a formal house,” he says. “A lot of happy people live in beautiful shacks in Happy Valley. The unhappy ones just want council handouts.”

A serviced site consists of a couple of mobile toilets every few hundred metres, some communal taps, a grid of eight dirt roads and sandy plots on which to build… M&G

No joy as Happy Valley looms large

“HAPPY VALLEY is a dumping site for informal settlement people,” were the words from one of the residents of Zilleraine Heights, an informal settlement in Parkwood.

The residents, who were moved to the open land on the corner of Acacia Road and Klip Road in Parkwood early last year after they invaded land in Civic Road in Grassy Park, are among informal settlers in the Western Cape who have been identified to be relocated to Happy Valley in Blackheath.

The residents were initially served with an interdict preventing more people from occupying the land, and then were served with an eviction order. The court case is currently pending.

Two weeks ago, Councillor Dan Plato, the city’s Mayoral Committee Member for Housing, took the residents on a tour of their potential new location, Happy Valley.

The residents of Zilleraine Heights are not the only informal settlers who have been identified for relocation to the “dum?ping site” at Happy Valley.

In a recent article in TygerBurger, sister publication of People’s Post, it was stated that the residents from an informal settlement in Belhar called Hugenotesaal would also potentially be moved to Happy Valley.

The residents of Zilleraine Heights, most of whom do not want to move, describe Happy Valley after their recent visit to the settlement as “a dirty place and crime ridden”. “It is like apartheid all over again. We do not have a choice in the matter,” says Eleanore Hoedemaker, a resident of Zilleraine. Lorraine Heunis says about the visit to Happy Valley, “It seems that Dan Plato tried painting a pretty picture of Happy Valley. When we got to the site, we first got lost and ended up meeting with the committee members of Happy Valley, some of whom have been living there for the past 10 years.”

She says that they were told by the local people what the conditions are like at the settlement.

“They said that that there are not enough toilets for everybody and they don’t clean the toilets often either. They also told us that there is a lot of crime committed in Happy Valley.”

However, she says that when they eventually met up with Plato, people were having a braai “and it looked as if everything was happy”.

But she says this was not a true reflection of what Happy Valley is like every day.

Plato, however, says that at this point in time, Happy Valley is the only alternative for the residents if they are evicted from the land they are currently occupying after the court case.

“They aggravated their own situation by invading land,” he says.

“There is nothing else available for the residents of Zilleraine.”

Plato says that they should be happy because there are “thousands of people who are interested in moving to Happy Valley”.

He adds that Happy Valley will be deve?loped to an formal town with houses within two to three years.

“The quickest way to get a house will be through Happy Valley,” says Plato.

He adds that people should not put strain on his department. “People cannot tell us where we need to put them.”

Plato says that once residents move to Happy Valley, they are to be given a housing starter kit, which consists of plastic sheets and poles.

He admits that the housing starter kit is not adequate for building a proper structure.

“The people want government to give them everything. They must bring their own building materials as well.”

Plato explains that there are toilet facilities at the site, which are shared by three to four families, and they are cleaned every second or third day.

According to the residents of Zilleraine Heights, it was Helen Zille, Executive Mayor of Cape Town, who initially moved them to the land they are now occupying in Parkwood.

But this week when People’s Post approached the mayor’s office for comment we were told that the media enquiry was a housing issue and not one for the Mayor’s office.

People’s Post

Cape Town housing crisis reaches new heights

Cape Town is a city where hundreds of thousands of people do not have proper homes and have little prospect of getting them, the Western Cape government says.

They are young, unemployed and poor, and the situation is worse by the year, according to the province’s housing plan, presented to the legislature’s housing portfolio committee on Tuesday.

Some of the shocking points which emerged from housing applications were:

• With an annual growth rate of only one percent, the city’s housing backlog was expected to reach 460,000 by 2020.
• If R1-billion was spent every year on building houses, the demand for formal housing would only be met by 2033.
• If R500-million was spent annually, the demand for site and services only would be met by 2017.
• Fifty-one percent of applicants lived in shacks, 31 percent in backyards and 12 percent shared homes with other people.
• Of the applicants, 79 percent earned less than R1 500 per month and 18 percent between R1 500 and R3 500.
• Most housing applicants - 60 percent - were aged between 21 and 40, and 31 percent had one dependant and 19 percent two or more.
• Sixty-three percent were unemployed.
• A huge majority - 93 percent - did not indicate the type of dwelling they wanted.

This information helped to give the provincial government an idea about what was needed to address the backlog, Manny Sotumi, provincial chief director for planning services, said.

“All this pertains to the metro which absorbs 70 percent of our grand funding - so it is telling as to the patterns that exist in the city and the province as a whole. A large proportion live in backyards and as such, our plan and strategy is to address that head on.

“The largest chunk without dependants are very young and people will have children. This is a growing population and we need to tailor for it accordingly.

“We’re using the total of 360,000 (applicants). We know it verges on the 400,000 mark, but if we look at one-percent growth year on year, we’re looking at a backlog of over a million by 2040 - if we don’t seek to deal with the issues,” Sotumi said.

At a cost of R13,500 per site, the plan showed that if site and services were funded to the tune of R2-billion per year, this backlog would be wiped out by 2018. If houses, at R56 000 per site, were built and R900-million spent annually, applicants’ demand for state-built houses would be met by 2012.

While on site arrangements are encouraged, the plan is aimed at housing people close to where they work and to reduce commuting times.

No deadline was given, but projects currently under way will result in construction of more than 12 000 houses. They include 6 242 in Delft, 2800 in Belhar, 1500 near Blue Downs and 650 in Ilitha Park in Khayelitsha.

“This is looking primarily at the metro since it absorbs most of our resources, although the rest of the province is also looked at,” Sotumi said.

Other projects expected to start over the next three years would build a further 6 347 houses in areas such as Grassy Park, Eerste River, Zeekoevlei, Pelican Park and Khayelitsha.

“(In) the year 2008/09, we’re looking at the possibility of releasing some 9 472 hectares of land. This does not mean we will have homes in that year. We will release the land, do the planning and then start construction as rapidly as possible,” he said.

Portfolio committee members asked if audits were done of available land, whether the province had the capacity to build so many houses, if contractors were suitable and if women and youth empowerment was considered.

Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi said a capacity audit was done in all municipalities in 2005.

“Key issues came up. We’ve found areas lacking also impact on housing delivery - whether it is engineering, project management and so on. As a result, we looked at shared services. Soon we’re going to the executive for a report that will help us beef up capacity,” he said.

Dyantyi’s head of department, Shanaaz Majiet, said: “One of the biggest weaknesses in some municipalities is contract management and project management. Another is the quality of monitoring on site.

“We do not want to create an impression there is an absolute lack of capacity because that would not be true, but we’ve got a very good sense of what kind of support is needed.” Cape Times

Two people killed in Khayelitsha fire

Two people have been killed and 36 left homeless after a shack fire in Khayelitsha guts 6 homes. A Cape Town Fire Brigade spokesperson says they were killed when their informal structure in the Harare section was gutted shortly after midnight.

The blaze was quickly put out. The spokesperson says the cause of the fire is not known at this stage, but will be investigated. - SABC

Opposition parties say Gateway project is failing

Opposition parties in the Western Cape are making corruption claims against Cape Town’s controversial N2 Gateway Housing project. They say the project is failing to solve the city’s housing backlog.

The venture between the national and provincial governments and the city was aimed at accelerating housing delivery to the poor. The plan was to deliver 22,000 units by June 2005, but so far, only 705 have been completed.

The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) says the provincial housing department has underspent its budget.

But Richard Dyantyi, the housing MEC, says the R600 million for N2 Gateway has already been spent. - SABC

E Cape housing delivery criticised

The “dismal” state of housing delivery in the Eastern Cape needs national intervention, a public watchdog organisation said on Tuesday.

Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) researcher Chantelle de Nobrega said the province would not meet a nationally set target to eradicate informal settlements by 2014 without help.

“The Eastern Cape will contribute little towards achieving this target unless the national Department of Housing takes decisive steps to intervene and improve the dismal service-delivery record of the provincial department of housing, local government and traditional affairs,” De Nobrega said.

The department would get a 24% budget increase in 2007/08 to R1,57-billion — which included a 37,8% housing conditional grant increase and a 34,26% increase for housing.

However, money was not the answer to “the housing delivery crisis”, said De Nobrega.

Third-quarter spending results for 2006/07 had demonstrated the department’s “inability to effectively manage its finances and spend money allocated to it for the building of houses”, she said.

By the third quarter, the department had spent 49,32% of its budget when it should have spent roughly 75%, she said.

In addition, only 38,2%, or R291-million of its R762-million conditional grant allocation, had been spent by the same period.

“Increasing its budget is therefore unlikely to result in more houses being built.”

Long-standing systemic problems included poor planning, monitoring and evaluation systems, and weak human-resource management, De Nobrega said.

Most of the province’s 400 housing projects in the province were “blocked” or stalled, as recently indicated by the provincial treasury’s superintendent general, Professor Newman Kusi.

“The department has done little to progressively realise access to adequate housing,” said De Nobrega.

“Without national intervention, it will do little to contribute to the ambitious target of 2014.”

National Housing department spokesperson Monwabisi Maclean said the department would look at the issues raised by PSAM, the province’s performance and whether a need for intervention existed.

“The department works with all the provinces at various levels and on various issues,” he said.

The provincial department’s spokesperson, Mbulelo Linda, said the department was addressing a number of housing issues.

These included blocked housing projects, municipal-capacity shortfalls and emerging contractors.

“We’re on track in terms of dealing with the problems that we have highlighted,” he said.

Both departments said they had not seen the PSAM statement. — Sapa

State 'won't cover R35m' for house repairs

The Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC) has been told to put in writing its appeal to the city council for a contribution to the R35-million it will cost to repair 2 473 defective houses.

Neil Ross, chairman of the City of Cape Town's housing portfolio committee, told CTCHC chief executive Fungai Mudimu that the committee was not mandated to allocate funding for remedial work to the low-cost houses built by the company.

The committee was presented with an audit of the defective houses and asked to contribute to the repair bill.

But Ross said: "Funding was to have come from the national housing rectification process, (yet) today we are told only some of the funding will come from that source.

"You need to put a proposal in writing to this council if you want money to be put into this process. That will have to go before the finance committee and Mayco."

Mudimu had told the committee the steps taken to consult residents about the audit. He said community leaders, Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi and Premier Ebrahim Rasool's office had been informed about the defects.

Dyantyi had committed his department to paying for some of the repairs, but wanted a breakdown of repairs and costs, Mudimu said.

"He wants to know how much it will cost for all the roofs, how much to fix all the walls, for example. We hope he will tell us how much he is prepared to put forward and I'm here today to solicit some funds for this programme."

Committee members expressed concern about the R35m repair bill, with some saying this was more than it had cost to build the houses and that the City had forked out R10m for repairs six years ago.

Hans Smith, of the City's Human Settlements Services, said residents should also bear some responsibility because not all the damage to the houses - such as broken windows and leaking gutters - arose from defective building.

In his presentation to the committee, Jeffrey Mahachi, technical director of the National Homebuilders Regulatory Council, said the council's audit last year had covered nine areas, including Manenberg, Mitchell's Plain and Philippi. The houses had been checked individually and it was found 98 percent of the 2 473 had minor defects, he said.

Factors that contributed to the defects included soil erosion, poor workmanship and the use of incorrect materials. Using a scale of 0-100 percent, with 100 for a house without defects, most of the houses scored between 65 percent and 70 percent. In one area, the average was 30 percent.

The bill to repair homes with major defects would be about R20m and those with minor defects about R15m, Mahachi said. - Cape Argus

Western Cape housing

Funding for subsidised housing in the Western Cape increases dramatically in the coming financial year, according to the provincial budget tabled on Tuesday.

The funds the province gives to municipalities to build subsidised housing will climb by 58,4%, from R599-million in the 2006/07 budget to R949-million in 2007/08.

The increase will be used to provide “higher quality and better-located houses”, according to the provincial treasury.

In her budget speech, provincial minister of finance Lynne Brown said this would often be done by upgrading informal settlements.

She said housing had been ranked by respondents in a survey conducted for the treasury as the most important infrastructure priority, above roads, community facilities and basic services.

She said a conditional grant from national government of R900-million had been earmarked for Cape Town’s N2 Gateway housing project, initiated by the city’s African National Congress administration ahead of last year’s local government elections.

The project, being run by the province rather than the city, has been plagued by delays and controversy, and has delivered only 2,000 units of the 22,000 that the national Housing Ministry promised would be built by the end of last year.

The city said last week that about 200 yet-to-be-occupied homes had been condemned because of substandard flooring and foundations.

It has also criticised the fact that the new homes cost more than the per-unit subsidy, which it says pushes the rentals beyond the reach of the people they were meant for. — Sapa

SA’s housing target is ‘unrealistic’

South Africa would have to build 2,4 million houses - or about 30,000 starter homes a month - if it wanted to complete its low-cost housing programme by the target date of 2014. However, housing officials now admit that this target is unrealistic.

S’bu Gumede, Chairperson of eThekwini Municipality’s housing subcommittee, said on Monday that South Africa was not doing enough to meet its goal of housing the country’s poorer communities by 2014.

He told politicians and officials at a housing subcommittee meeting that the city housing department might need to build twice as many houses every year if it planned to meet its goal in the next seven years.

He said that, nationally, 2,2 million houses had been built over the past 14 years at 200,000 a year, but there was still a backlog of 2,4 million.

‘we will need nationally to double our performance’
“If we have built 2,2 million in 14 years, then we will need another 14 years to build the next 2,4 million houses.

“But our target is only seven years away, so we will need nationally to double our performance to about 400,000 or 500,000 houses a year,” he said.

The council is building 16,000 homes a year but may now be required to build 32,000 houses annually.

eThekwini had set its own housing goal at 2010 but, Gumede said, this also seemed “far-fetched” and it would “require a miracle” to fulfil this target.

Department head Cogie Pather said more money was expected soon from the national housing coffers to accelerate the process. However, the department would also be under pressure to build bigger houses for the poor.

Presently, the municipality builds 30-metre square houses but might have to increase this to between 36-metre square and 40-metre square to meet new national guidelines.

Gumede asked Pather to return to their next meeting with a presentation on the city’s building programme. He also asked Pather to assess whether building 32,000 houses a year would be feasible.

Pather said: “We have not assessed this issue, but one of the challenges is going to be the shortage of cement.”

Before the meeting, The Mercury joined councillors on a tour of the city to inspect some of the newer housing projects and to witness the city’s efforts to transform its worst slums into formal communities.

Councillors inspected some of 1,330 new houses that had been built in Umlazi among the shacks.

The campaign, which began in 2005, aims to replace informal housing with basic starter homes without unduly displacing communities and families.

In previous years, shack-dwellers have complained that although they received new homes they were often far away from their work and schools that they were forced to almost start their lives over again. - The Mercury

Cape shacklands mushroom to 240

The number of informal settlements in the City of Cape Town has mushroomed to 240, with more than half a million people crammed into about 110,000 self-made shacks.

The number of shacks is a 10 percent increase since 2005.

And of the 240 settlements, only 89 can be upgraded into formal housing.

This is the stark reality of the challenge facing the city council as it tackles the housing backlog of almost 400,000 desperately needed homes.

The city council is working on a plan of action to deliver the most-needed services to all the in-formal settlements within its municipal boundaries.

The integrated plan is being led by senior city housing official Hans Smit.

“The plan will carry the details of every informal settlement, what needs to be upgraded, what can be upgraded, et cetera,” he explained.

Mayor Helen Zille said that next to every recorded priority needed for every informal settlement would be a number showing where that venue was in the queue for that service. “So we’ll know exactly where we stand with every informal settlement,” she said.

Smit said he believed the research would show that the city would need a minimum of around 500 hectares of available land on which to build the backlog of houses.

This figure was derived by looking at which informal settlements were on unsuitable ground, such as near electrical pylons, on flood plains or where the current density of shacks is more dense than any future formal housing.

An example of this is Enkanini in eastern Khayelitsha, bordering Baden Powell Drive near Monwabisi. About 10,000 shacks have been erected there in the past two to three years but there will only be room to build 5000 formal houses. Other major informal settlements are Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay, Masiphumelele near Kommetjie and Crossroads.

Smit said typical density for low-cost housing was 60 to 70 per hectare.

A Cape Argus visit to Enkanini revealed desperate poverty and appalling living conditions.

In response, the mayor said: “People do not understand the extent of the challenge.”

Zille alleged that Enkanini had come to be populated after a “mass emigration” from the Eastern Cape a few years ago and that the ANC had not stopped this because it was “useful electorally” as the new voters bolstered the ANC’s support.

The ANC’s Garth Strachan described the situation as “shocking and unacceptable”, but denied that the settlement was “somehow condoned in return for votes”.

“The appalling poverty and social degradation of Enkanini is mirrored in similar conditions in many other informal settlements in Cape Town.

“There should be multi-government co-operation to alleviate (their) plight,” Strachan said.

He said: “The provincial government’s Growth and Development Strategy seeks to ensure that there is a province-wide plan to marshal resources at all three levels of government to systematically attack poverty and create a trajectory of sustainable growth in the province.” - Cape Argus

Politics in housing delivery

The Democratic Alliance today called for an investigation into the allocation of houses at Cape Town’s N2 Gateway social housing project because luxury cars were seen parked outside some of the units. “Serious questions need to be asked about the process used to allocate houses in the N2 Gateway development, given the number of luxury German cars that appear to belong to the tenants of these units,” Butch Steyn, a MP, said in a statement.

“A DA visit suggests that those in real need of state housing have been pushed out of the queue for N2 Gateway houses by the less needy,” he said. Steyn said the houses were supposed to be allocated to people who could not otherwise afford formal housing with the rental being between R300 and R500 a month.

During a brief on-site visit to the N2 development, the DA found five luxury BMW’s, Audi’s and Mercedes’ parked in bays attached to the units, and other new vehicles. Their research put a new BMW 6 series at between R825 000 and R951 000 and repayments on an Audi at R3370 a month.

“If it proves to be true that people with substantial incomes are benefiting from state housing, then the housing allocation process is obviously being abused and housing lists ignored. It is difficult to see how this could be done without the complicity of government officials,” Steyn said. Steyn called for a thorough investigation into the allocation process.

The party’s Marike Groenewald told reporters that the party did not interact with the owners of the cars and did not establish whether they belonged to residents or visitors. Vusi Tshose, spokesperson for Richard Dyantyi, the Western Cape housing MEC, said tenants in that section of Gateway must have a monthly income of between R2 000 and R7 500.

“People who want to investigate have their democratic right,” he said, adding that the MEC will consider the request if it was brought to his attention. The project is aimed at accommodating squatters and “backyard” dwellers and has three phases according to income levels.

By July 2006 22 000 units were to have been completed but so far just over 700 have been completed. - Sapa

Build inland, UN climate report warns

An international panel of scientists has proposed that all countries cease building on coastal land that is less than a metre above high tide so as to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change.

The recommendation was one of many from experts from 11 countries, working for the United Nations, who have spent two years devising a blueprint to allow countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the next century.

They warned that tens of millions of people would become environmental refugees as sea levels rose and storm surges increased. Rich countries therefore had to allocate billions of pounds to research and develop cleaner energy sources.

The 166-page report, sponsored by the private UN Foundation and Sigma Xi, a research society representing 60 000 scientists, comes only three weeks after hundreds of top scientists warned that global temperatures could rise out of control.

The report says the UN and governments should be galvanised to respond, and countries should immediately agree to limit further global temperature rises this century to no more than 2°C. The report calls for more public transport and better fuels, and cities based on the highest energy efficiency standards.

The panel said two starkly different futures were possible: “Society’s current path leads to increasingly serious impacts … The other path leads to a transformation in the way society generates and uses energy [and] creates economic opportunity, and helps reduce poverty.”

“Humanity must act collectively and urgently to change course through leadership at all levels of society. There is no more time for delay.” - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

MPS unhappy with delays in N2 Gateway project

The City of Cape Town’s failure to release parcels of land was causing major construction delays in the N2 Gateway project, a senior housing official told the portfolio committee for housing on Wednesday.

During an analysis of all pilot housing projects in the country, MPs raised a number of concerns over the lack of progress in the country’s biggest housing project, the R2-billion N2 Gateway project.

“We are unhappy at the state of readiness of pilot projects in the country,” said committee chairperson Zoe Kota.

Responding to concerns, national housing director-general Itumeleng Kotsoane said the department has been waiting for about six months for Cape Town mayor Helen Zille and city manager Achmat Ebrahim to sign the land off.

The land has not been released despite an additional R370-million allocation from the national Treasury…

But mayoral spokesman Robert MacDonald said: “It’s not correct that land availability is causing the delay. They are already building anyway. It’s just an excuse for poor planning. There were delays before [the DA] even came into power.”

MacDonald said the flats were three times more expensive than ordinary government-subsidised [RDP] houses.

“They went over budget and there were problems of contractors not being paid and that’s what caused the delays,” MacDonald said. He said stringent Environmental Impact Assessments had also caused delays.

Deputy director-general Ahmedi Vawda said, despite the challenges, the provision of social housing had increased.

“There is definitely a crisis in the city on land availability and the costs. Land [in Cape Town] doesn’t exist for the purpose of low-income housing. But over the last 10 years social housing has risen from two percent to ten percent because of this project,” Vawda said.

In 2006 it was revealed in a mayoral committee meeting that contractors had started work without signed contracts, approved funding and clear guidelines on what was to be built. The City called for a forensic audit of all contracts in relation to the N2 Gateway project. Kotsoane said this was one of the reasons they couldn’t get developers on the land. - Cape Times