HOUSING officials are meeting this week in Midrand to find ways to provide decent housing to the homeless.
The Knowledge Week conference at the Vulindlela Academy opened on Wednesday, 20 October, and is hosted by the Department of Human Settlements and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), with the aim of creating a platform for sharing knowledge concerning the development of human settlements. The summit will end on Friday, 22 October.
With the theme, South African Human Settlements 2030 - Rethinking the Spatial Development Trajectory, the conference will be looking at issues such as spatial trends and planning responses, institutional reconfiguration, key drivers of sustainable human developments, environmental considerations, funding and politics of space.
The Minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale, is part of the delegation that will be putting their heads together with the hope of coming up with a solution to housing.
Speaking at the opening meeting, Sexwale said, “Our participation as government in this Knowledge Week Summit, with the DBSA as our logical partner of choice, is part of our quest for realisable ideas towards the fulfilment of our mission.”
He noted that the concept of Human Settlements 2030 was introduced during the budget vote address in April of this year.
Sexwale told those present that the summit came after a series of interactions, which gave the department a better understanding of the situation. The exchanges involved:
“We have been working, not in just some of the high profile visits and launches which you may have seen in the media, but in a total of more than 8,700 human settlements projects, which are underway across the length and breadth of the country.”
Currently, there are over 2,700 informal settlements, which makes South Africa one of the countries with the highest number of informal dwellings, but according to the minister, many informal settlements are being upgraded.
In Johannesburg alone, there are 180 informal settlements containing 180,000 households, but to date over 60 informal settlements around the city have been upgraded and formalised, which means they have electricity and water.
Informal settlements, often referred to as squatter camps or shanty towns, are common features of developing countries and are typically the product of an urgent need for shelter by the urban poor. As such they are characterised by a dense multiplication of small, make-shift shelters built from diverse materials, degradation of the local ecosystem and by severe social problems.
- Joburg.org.za
The Knowledge Week conference at the Vulindlela Academy opened on Wednesday, 20 October, and is hosted by the Department of Human Settlements and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), with the aim of creating a platform for sharing knowledge concerning the development of human settlements. The summit will end on Friday, 22 October.
With the theme, South African Human Settlements 2030 - Rethinking the Spatial Development Trajectory, the conference will be looking at issues such as spatial trends and planning responses, institutional reconfiguration, key drivers of sustainable human developments, environmental considerations, funding and politics of space.
The Minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale, is part of the delegation that will be putting their heads together with the hope of coming up with a solution to housing.
Speaking at the opening meeting, Sexwale said, “Our participation as government in this Knowledge Week Summit, with the DBSA as our logical partner of choice, is part of our quest for realisable ideas towards the fulfilment of our mission.”
He noted that the concept of Human Settlements 2030 was introduced during the budget vote address in April of this year.
Sexwale told those present that the summit came after a series of interactions, which gave the department a better understanding of the situation. The exchanges involved:
- Interacting with people in informal settlements to obtain a view about improving their conditions;
- engaging with key partners in business and civil society in a plenary session where a common approach would be developed around integrated planning and social cohesion;
- exchanging ideas with all the major banks and other key players in the financial sector around the financing of human settlement development, and to ensure the more effective implementation of the Home Loans and Mortgage Disclosure Act;
- bringing together innovators, designers, manufacturers and inventors at an exhibition on alternative building technologies, where a range of new ideas were presented with the view of reducing the costs of construction and introducing new technologies; and
- as part of enhancing inner city development, the department interacted with private sector partners to jointly fund the revamping of solid buildings in town and city centres for affordable inner city residential use.
“We have been working, not in just some of the high profile visits and launches which you may have seen in the media, but in a total of more than 8,700 human settlements projects, which are underway across the length and breadth of the country.”
Currently, there are over 2,700 informal settlements, which makes South Africa one of the countries with the highest number of informal dwellings, but according to the minister, many informal settlements are being upgraded.
In Johannesburg alone, there are 180 informal settlements containing 180,000 households, but to date over 60 informal settlements around the city have been upgraded and formalised, which means they have electricity and water.
Informal settlements, often referred to as squatter camps or shanty towns, are common features of developing countries and are typically the product of an urgent need for shelter by the urban poor. As such they are characterised by a dense multiplication of small, make-shift shelters built from diverse materials, degradation of the local ecosystem and by severe social problems.
- Joburg.org.za
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