New housing plan needed

Cape Town - It was time for a rethink on the provision of free houses, Western Cape housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela said on Wednesday.

He also said the government should "revisit" the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act (PIE), as it was a major obstacle to housing delivery.

Addressing a housing conference in Cape Town, he said South Africa appeared to be the only country in the world that gave people free homes.

There were five million registered taxpayers in South Africa, supporting 13 million grant recipients.

The unemployment rate was between 30% and 40% and growing, which meant the bulk of the population depended on a small and diminishing number of taxpayers for their basic needs.

"It is quite clear that we need to rethink whether or not we continue to give people a free house.

"This is not an easy decision to make... But we need to decide: do we continue to do a lot for a few people or do we shift towards a little for many people?

"It cannot be fair or just that a beneficiary can receive a full house with services free of charge, whilst hundreds of thousands of others have to wait for years in backyards or informal settlements without even basic services."

Serviced sites over complete houses

This was why the Western Cape - the only province controlled by Madikizela's Democratic Alliance - would in coming years prioritise provision of serviced sites over delivery of complete houses.

Going this route meant it would be able to give housing opportunities to three times as many people as was currently the case.

Madikizela said there was a housing shortage of about half a million units in the Western Cape.

With the R1.58bn the province would get this year from national government in terms of the Division of Revenue Act, it could build about 16 000 housing units and 18 000 serviced sites.

At that rate, and if the housing shortage remained static, it would take some 28 years to eliminate the backlog.

However the backlog was growing as people migrated to the Western Cape from other provinces.

If the current "high growth trajectory" continued, by 2040 the backlog would have nearly doubled to 804 000.

PIE 'a problem'

"It is time for us to make some critical choices about the way we deliver housing," he said.

"Politicians need to summon the political will to take decisions that may be unpopular in the short term, but will have long term benefits for everyone."
He said PIE was problematic because it rewarded people who broke the law.

"People invade the land, and when we evict them as government, the PIE act says we must find alternative land. That is a serious problem.

"So we [have] actually asked the national department and the national Cabinet to look seriously at this act, because really it is a stumbling block on us building houses as quickly as we would want."

- SAPA