GOVERNMENT’s low-cost housing programme is both one of its most successful interventions, and one of its biggest failures.
Take a drive around any part of SA and you will see thousands upon thousands of small “RDP-type” houses dotted across the countryside, in small rural villages and midsized outlying towns. One cannot deny the effort, or the money, that has gone into delivering homes to the poorest of the poor.
Yet a portion of them stand empty. It’s enough to make a government policy maker weep with frustration, because the vacancies are the result of a failure of SA’s initial housing policy. It was a numbers-driven game, with housing officials chasing a target of delivering 1-million houses in the first five years of democracy. In the rush to meet the target, houses were built wherever there was land available. And more often than not, that land was nowhere near economic centres.
The simple truth is that many younger, economically active people do not wish to live in houses in far-flung areas. What is a roof over one’s head worth if you cannot feed yourself or your children because there are no jobs in the area?
People would rather live in shacks without sanitation, electricity or water simply because they are cheap and close to cities where there is some hope of finding a job. The Mail & Guardian ran an article a few weeks ago about conditions in Enkanini, part of Khayelitsha, which is sprawled across kilometres of sand dunes from the Cape Flats to Monwabisi beach in False Bay. It’s not on the map, has no roads, no electricity, no toilets, no grass and crime is rampant. It’s desperate stuff. Yet about half a million people live there, many coming from Eastern Cape in the hope of making a living.
In the early 2000s there was a futile attempt to shift resources for housing and other services into rural areas. Government cut the provincial housing budgets of key urban areas and channeled more money into poor and rural regions. The aim was to alleviate poverty in the poorest places but the upshot is that funding to urban areas in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal was cut, so the number of houses built was reduced. Yet cities such as Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban had the greatest demand for housing as they were experiencing a huge influx of people.
Something had to give. It took some time but government has recently changed its housing policy in an attempt to meet this demand. The shift is that government has made a commitment to delivering settlements that are both “sustainable and habitable”. That’s government speak for building homes in places where people want to live.
It’s not going to happen anytime soon. Despite 2-million houses being built since 1994, the backlog has actually grown. It now stands at 2,4-million homes. That’s not just due to population growth and people moving from rural areas to cities. It’s also the result of the migration of people into SA from neighbouring countries. So now, SA needs to double the number of houses built each year just to keep up with demand.
Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu joked recently that she had “spoken nicely” to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel about allocating more money to the housing budget. Manuel obviously listened, having allocated a further R2,7bn to the budget in 2006-07, taking the total allocation for housing over the next three years to R32bn.
So money is not a problem but it must be spent in such a way that people get to live where they want. There is much anecdotal evidence on what this means, as well as pointers in surveys undertaken by government. One of these is the document on macro-social trends released in June last year, A Nation in the Making. It shows that the majority of people migrating to cities — predominantly in Gauteng and Western Cape — are single men and women aged 20-34. Most have extended families and want to live as cheaply as possible close to work so they can send money home, or get their children into a good school. We also know there’s not enough available land in or around city centres to accommodate the demand for houses.
If it is to make any sort of a dent in the housing backlog, government has to focus more on high-density and rental housing. That does not mean the high-rise horrors that were built in the UK which became breeding grounds for gangs, but rather eight- to 10-story residential blocks that are good quality and reasonable. Coupled to this is Sisulu’s drive to upgrade informal settlements. It’s controversial but makes good sense, bringing formal structures and services to places which are unsafe and toxic.
All of this will work only if government can bring the private sector on board — both the construction industry and banks — in a sustainable fashion, and boost capacity at provincial and municipal level. After a flying start, government was slow to recognise and adapt to the lifestyle shifts happening within its population. At last that seems to be changing, but political leadership and private sector buy-in will be needed to succeed. - Business Day
Take a drive around any part of SA and you will see thousands upon thousands of small “RDP-type” houses dotted across the countryside, in small rural villages and midsized outlying towns. One cannot deny the effort, or the money, that has gone into delivering homes to the poorest of the poor.
Yet a portion of them stand empty. It’s enough to make a government policy maker weep with frustration, because the vacancies are the result of a failure of SA’s initial housing policy. It was a numbers-driven game, with housing officials chasing a target of delivering 1-million houses in the first five years of democracy. In the rush to meet the target, houses were built wherever there was land available. And more often than not, that land was nowhere near economic centres.
The simple truth is that many younger, economically active people do not wish to live in houses in far-flung areas. What is a roof over one’s head worth if you cannot feed yourself or your children because there are no jobs in the area?
People would rather live in shacks without sanitation, electricity or water simply because they are cheap and close to cities where there is some hope of finding a job. The Mail & Guardian ran an article a few weeks ago about conditions in Enkanini, part of Khayelitsha, which is sprawled across kilometres of sand dunes from the Cape Flats to Monwabisi beach in False Bay. It’s not on the map, has no roads, no electricity, no toilets, no grass and crime is rampant. It’s desperate stuff. Yet about half a million people live there, many coming from Eastern Cape in the hope of making a living.
In the early 2000s there was a futile attempt to shift resources for housing and other services into rural areas. Government cut the provincial housing budgets of key urban areas and channeled more money into poor and rural regions. The aim was to alleviate poverty in the poorest places but the upshot is that funding to urban areas in Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal was cut, so the number of houses built was reduced. Yet cities such as Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban had the greatest demand for housing as they were experiencing a huge influx of people.
Something had to give. It took some time but government has recently changed its housing policy in an attempt to meet this demand. The shift is that government has made a commitment to delivering settlements that are both “sustainable and habitable”. That’s government speak for building homes in places where people want to live.
It’s not going to happen anytime soon. Despite 2-million houses being built since 1994, the backlog has actually grown. It now stands at 2,4-million homes. That’s not just due to population growth and people moving from rural areas to cities. It’s also the result of the migration of people into SA from neighbouring countries. So now, SA needs to double the number of houses built each year just to keep up with demand.
Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu joked recently that she had “spoken nicely” to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel about allocating more money to the housing budget. Manuel obviously listened, having allocated a further R2,7bn to the budget in 2006-07, taking the total allocation for housing over the next three years to R32bn.
So money is not a problem but it must be spent in such a way that people get to live where they want. There is much anecdotal evidence on what this means, as well as pointers in surveys undertaken by government. One of these is the document on macro-social trends released in June last year, A Nation in the Making. It shows that the majority of people migrating to cities — predominantly in Gauteng and Western Cape — are single men and women aged 20-34. Most have extended families and want to live as cheaply as possible close to work so they can send money home, or get their children into a good school. We also know there’s not enough available land in or around city centres to accommodate the demand for houses.
If it is to make any sort of a dent in the housing backlog, government has to focus more on high-density and rental housing. That does not mean the high-rise horrors that were built in the UK which became breeding grounds for gangs, but rather eight- to 10-story residential blocks that are good quality and reasonable. Coupled to this is Sisulu’s drive to upgrade informal settlements. It’s controversial but makes good sense, bringing formal structures and services to places which are unsafe and toxic.
All of this will work only if government can bring the private sector on board — both the construction industry and banks — in a sustainable fashion, and boost capacity at provincial and municipal level. After a flying start, government was slow to recognise and adapt to the lifestyle shifts happening within its population. At last that seems to be changing, but political leadership and private sector buy-in will be needed to succeed. - Business Day
