THE air over Masiphumelele is fraught with tension today as school site residents await the formal outcome of a round of talks between their Amakhaya ngoku! (Homes now!) Housing Committee and members of MEC Richard Dyantyi's Department of Housing (DOH).
The talks, held in the Hokisa Peace House, have the potential to make or break the community's proposal to build, for the first time in South African history, decent homes for 380 families in partnership with government.
Speaking on behalf of Amakhaya chairperson Thembinkozi Kitchen, committee member Melvin Begala explains that residents have been dumbfounded by the DOH's new stance, which seems set to refuse residents the right to eventually buy the very property they are helping to build.
The Community Residential Units programme will see residents receiving a partial housing subsidy, and having to obtain loans for the remainder of the cost of their homes.
"The other proposal was that the residents continue renting the properties from government for the rest of their life.
"In effect this means we will never own our own homes, which was why we started this project in the first place.""
The project came about when school site residents, unwilling to live at the mercy of devastating fire and floods any longer, decided to help government deliver on their seemingly long-forgotten promise of building proper homes. With the help of the likes of Dr Lutz van Dijk and Dr Peter Jacka of Hokisa, Fish Hoek architect John Shaw and lawyer Frank Guthrie, residents successfully registered all 380 households,handed government a complete set of architectural plans and infrastructure studies and started the process of gaining planning approval from the City of Cape Town.
More than that, however, residents promised to subsidise governmen's building work, which would have cost around R40 million, by R11 million.
The proposal saw a fresh breeze of optimism and hope flutter through the stale halls of power. Arch rivals Dyantyi and Mayor Helen Zille took hands and sincerely pledged their full support to the "worthy" and "historic" initiative earlier this year. Dyantyi took it a step further and promised "all the assistance and support his department could offer in all the committee's initiatives."
In June Van Dijk returned from a triumphant fund-raising tour of Europe with R10 million in donor funding. And as July rolled past the city fulfilled its promise and announced the process to rezone the former school site from educational use to common residential use had formally begun.
The way seemed clear for residents to start their move in December to a pre-approved site adjacent to Masiphumelele, where they would live temporarily as building work on their new homes, and new lives, began in January 2008...
"If the DOH can't agree to a workable rent-to-buy subsidy option, better than the two they currently have tabled, the project will lose all its hard won donor funding," says Dr Van Dijk. "We hope that these talks will solve things. There is no other option. Government needs to give us better answers," Begala concluded.
Spokesperson for Dyantyi, Vusi Tshose, had not responded to People's Post's questions at the time of going to press, which were:
1. Are Department of Housing officials mandated to negotiate a rent-to-buy option?
2. Why were the two subsidy proposals, clearly unacceptable to residents, tabled in the first place?
3. Will the MEC get involved if unhappiness over this matter is not resolved on Tuesday?
- Peoples Post
The talks, held in the Hokisa Peace House, have the potential to make or break the community's proposal to build, for the first time in South African history, decent homes for 380 families in partnership with government.
Speaking on behalf of Amakhaya chairperson Thembinkozi Kitchen, committee member Melvin Begala explains that residents have been dumbfounded by the DOH's new stance, which seems set to refuse residents the right to eventually buy the very property they are helping to build.
"It has been terrible. Government seems to have been working things backwards instead of forwards with subsidy proposals that will not work," Begala says."One proposal was that residents buy the houses by signing up for the Community Residential Units programme. This programme is designed for people who earn salaries of less than R3,500 per month, but almost nobody in the school site even has a job," Begala says.
The Community Residential Units programme will see residents receiving a partial housing subsidy, and having to obtain loans for the remainder of the cost of their homes.
"The other proposal was that the residents continue renting the properties from government for the rest of their life.
"In effect this means we will never own our own homes, which was why we started this project in the first place.""
The project came about when school site residents, unwilling to live at the mercy of devastating fire and floods any longer, decided to help government deliver on their seemingly long-forgotten promise of building proper homes. With the help of the likes of Dr Lutz van Dijk and Dr Peter Jacka of Hokisa, Fish Hoek architect John Shaw and lawyer Frank Guthrie, residents successfully registered all 380 households,handed government a complete set of architectural plans and infrastructure studies and started the process of gaining planning approval from the City of Cape Town.
More than that, however, residents promised to subsidise governmen's building work, which would have cost around R40 million, by R11 million.
The proposal saw a fresh breeze of optimism and hope flutter through the stale halls of power. Arch rivals Dyantyi and Mayor Helen Zille took hands and sincerely pledged their full support to the "worthy" and "historic" initiative earlier this year. Dyantyi took it a step further and promised "all the assistance and support his department could offer in all the committee's initiatives."
In June Van Dijk returned from a triumphant fund-raising tour of Europe with R10 million in donor funding. And as July rolled past the city fulfilled its promise and announced the process to rezone the former school site from educational use to common residential use had formally begun.
The way seemed clear for residents to start their move in December to a pre-approved site adjacent to Masiphumelele, where they would live temporarily as building work on their new homes, and new lives, began in January 2008...
"If the DOH can't agree to a workable rent-to-buy subsidy option, better than the two they currently have tabled, the project will lose all its hard won donor funding," says Dr Van Dijk. "We hope that these talks will solve things. There is no other option. Government needs to give us better answers," Begala concluded.
Spokesperson for Dyantyi, Vusi Tshose, had not responded to People's Post's questions at the time of going to press, which were:
1. Are Department of Housing officials mandated to negotiate a rent-to-buy option?
2. Why were the two subsidy proposals, clearly unacceptable to residents, tabled in the first place?
3. Will the MEC get involved if unhappiness over this matter is not resolved on Tuesday?
- Peoples Post
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