BBC in pictures leaving Cape Town Shacks

The challenges for other families remain vast. The Western Cape has a housing backlog of 320,000 families. Each year, 48,000 people arrive in the province from elsewhere in search of work, yet the current budget allows the province to build only 18,000 houses per year.

BBC Pictorial

Deadline for N2 Gateway applications extended

The deadline for applications for homes in the first phase of the N2 Gateway development has been extended because of the large number of people wanting to apply.

Applications were to have closed on Monday before the housing and local government department began vetting them and allocating the units.

"Because of (the large number of) people wanting to get their applications in at the last minute, the MEC decided to extend the deadline to Friday," Vusi Tshose, spokesperson for Western Cape MEC for Local Government and Housing Richard Dyantyi.

While remaining tight-lipped about what the allocations process would entail, he said Dyantyi hoped to complete it "as soon as possible... We want to get the N2 Gateway Phase One behind us," said Tshose.

He could not provide a timeline, however. The first phase comprises 705 rental units.

Tshose said it was "difficult" to say how many applications had been received, but judging from the number of telephone calls, there was strong interest.

Tshose said the picture was likely to be clearer today.

The department called last week for applications and 60 community development workers were deployed to distribute application forms.

People living in shacks or backyard accommodation in Langa, Gugulethu, Bonteheuwel, Joe Slovo, Bokmakierie and Nyanga were invited to apply.

Tshose said that among the criteria for applicants was that they should be South African citizens, older than 21 years and have "some form of income".

Meanwhile, the Gugulethu Backyard Dwellers' Association says it is to go ahead with plans to stage a protest on Friday.

The protest would be against the criteria for applicants for N2 Gateway homes as they excluded the unemployed, association chairperson Mncedisi Twalo said.

The association hoped to hand housing officials a memorandum outlining their grievances, he said.

Chief of these was that people had to have a basic income to qualify to apply - a requirement that ruled out most residents.

"(The government is) playing its cards close to its chest," Twalo said.

"Our people are not part of the decision-making process about issues taking place in their area. We are demanding houses for everyone. There needs to be a system of consultation and engagement."

Tshose said, however, that the association's grievances were not valid as the units being advertised were for rental only. Also, these homes were in what was only the first phase of the N2 Gateway project.

Affordable housing and government-subsidised homes were under construction, he said.

These are being built in Joe Slovo Phase Two, which was to comprise 1 000 houses, New Rest (1 154), Boystown (1 500), Delft Symphony (6 240 houses and 600 rental units) and Delft Towns (4 500 houses and about 800 rental units).

"A rental unit means a person will have to pay," Tshose said.

"This is only one section of the N2 Gateway, so the statement that the unemployed are not being provided for is incorrect. There will be a variety of options for people." - Cape Times

Nation in the Making demands we take a new look at housing

ONE of the great policy ironies of SA’s first decade of democracy is that the more houses government dispensed, the more the housing backlog grew.

The backlog stood at 1,2-million in 1994. Government has since provided more than 1,6-million subsidised houses for the poor. Now Gauteng alone is short of 600000 houses, the province reported recently.

Housing delivery in recent years has fallen far short of what’s needed to meet demand. But the backlog has grown in part precisely because government has delivered some houses to the poor. And it reflects far-reaching changes in how and where low income South Africans live and work.

One of the most striking changes is that the size of the average South African household has fallen significantly, with the number of households growing much faster than the population…

Take housing policy. There are lots of good aspects to the strategy minister Lindiwe Sisulu launched a couple of years ago. But the central objective of government policy, as she frequently emphasises, is “that we eradicate informal settlements by 2014”. Eradicate, not upgrade. The policy is, in fact, more ambiguous.

But the rhetoric certainly suggests the aim is to abolish SA’s squatter camps in coming years. Not only is this unrealistic, but one wonders why there is an obsession with it — rather than, say, simply with ensuring people have a suitable roof over their head…

The minister’s own figures show there are 2,4-million households in informal settlements. More importantly, we have plenty of anecdotal evidence that people choose shacks even when they have access to formal houses. An office worker who can afford to rent in town might instead live in a squatter camp and spend her money on good schools for her children. And a huge number of lower income people have multiple households. One reason is high transport costs, so working adults may live in shacks close to work while other family members occupy the awkwardly situated RDP house, or rent it out. New migrants to the cities will often find temporary accommodation in township backyards or informal settlements.

So the expansion of informal settlements reflects household and migration patterns, and helps to solve the problems those patterns create. Not that informal settlements should be idealised. They are often unsanitary and unsafe. But even if SA builds a lot more houses, as it must, shacks are likely to continue to provide homes for the poor for a long time to come. So could the minister please stop threatening to eradicate them?

Business Day - News Worthing Knowing

N2 Gateway second phase ‘to start soon’ - InternAfrica Calls for public & civil participation

CAPE TOWN — Work on the second phase of the controversial N2 Gateway project to upgrade housing in informal settlements along Cape Town’s N2 highway was expected to start soon, Western Cape housing MEC Richard Dyantyi told residents of Langa last week.

Dyantyi said the project, known as Joe Slovo phase two, would yield 1000 houses, consisting of a mixture of bonded “gap” housing and fully subsidised units. At least 706 rental units were built in the first phase.

The project caused a skirmish between the newly elected Democratic Alliance-led multiparty government in the city and the African National Congress (ANC)-led province over claims of mismanagement and about R28min overruns.

Following the row, responsibility for the project was moved from the city to a government housing agency, a section 21 company called Thubelisha Homes.

The N2 Gateway project was a pilot project that formed part of the national housing department’s “breaking new ground” policy aimed at providing 22000 houses for ownership and rental, said Dyantyi. This project had sought an “urgent but sensitive response” to Cape Town’s housing needs, and the first phase had provided many lessons on how to tackle the project, he said.

The provincial housing department will be responsible for allocating the accommodation, and Dyantyi said applications were being invited from Langa, Gugulethu, Bonteheuwel, Joe Slovo, Bokmakierie and Nyanga.

He said rental costs were being finalised, and that 60 community development workers had been “deployed” to distribute the application forms and assist the applicants.

Dyantyi said the closing date for this process was today. Once the contractual issues and the process of allocation were complete, he would announce the moving-in date.

Business Day - News Worth Knowing

WUF4 Nanjing China 2008

China’s approach to rapid urbanization will influence the global urban agenda for the foreseeable future. This session will explore the changes and opportunities for urbanization in China and elsewhere, and provide insight on the issues that will table at the WUF4.

In recognition of the significance of China’s contribution to the international urban dialogue, the Fourth Session of the World Urban Forum in 2008 will be hosted by the Ministry of Construction of China and the City of Nanjing.

InternAfrica will be there.

Child-headed families increasing at alarming rate

The number of child-headed families is increasing every day and in South Africa more than two million children were orphaned in 2004, nearly half of them by Aids, according to the Joint UN Programme of HIV/Aids (UNAids) statistics.

The burden of caring for the younger children usually falls on the oldest sibling as is being experienced by a family of three in Kimberley. They are currently struggling because the eldest is too young to apply for a grant. Naledi and Akanyang have a home, lots of love and occasionally a full stomach and they have an elder sister, 17-year-old Kelebogile. She helps her sisters with their homework, clothes them and cooks their food, in short, she’s their mother.

InternAfrica has its key focus set on assisting HIV+ women with dependants. We recognise the UN Data and the problem this will be on society shortly.

Our core focus is to ensure mothers the security and knowledge that their children will survive them in a secure fire proof home.

Social Impact sans Compact

35 000 child-headed homes exist across the country already.

Things InternAfrica has learnt from WUF3

Many new ideas are coming from the World Urban Forum 3 being held in Vancouver Canada.

The most important of which we are making plans to share with Local Government and Housing. Planning is very important to sustainable development.

Eg. Planning development with the 50-year flood plain in mind.

Important Notes:

• Make planning the tool for effective urban governance

• No sustainable development without sustainable urbanisation

  No sustainable urbanisation without effective and accountable planning

• Urban planning is a precondition of sustainability

• NO Development without open transparent public participation and consultation!
  

  DIALOGUE 2
  The Shape of Cities: Urban Planning and Management

• WUF3 Webcast
  

Langa outrage over Gateway integration

Emotions ran high as Langa residents demanded answers from Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi in a meeting over the controversial N2 Gateway housing project on Thursday night.

It was evident that Dyantyi would have his work cut out for him at the community hall, packed with more than 1 000 residents begging for clarity.

‘People from other areas are going to apply’

Dyantyi said: “The demand for housing is big and the backlog is growing each year. One of the mistakes that we have made with this project was to think of housing the people living in shacks without thinking of those living in back yards. But this is a lesson that there are other things we must take into account.”

He later added that the 70-30 split between Joe Slovo fire victims and shack dwellers (70 percent) and backyard dwellers still applied, but there was room for that policy to be revised depending on the outcome of the application process.

A particular bone of contention was the assertion by the government that would open the application process for the now complete phase one to residents in Bonteheuwel and Bokmakierie.

Resident Pamela Ngcayi was upset about people from outside of Langa being allowed to apply.

“My concern is that I have been staying in a bungalow where I was born in the back yard of my family’s house for years,” she said.

‘The N2 project is going to be benefit all the communities along the N2′

“I am now 45 years old and I still don’t have a house. Government is too slow. These houses are not enough and now people from other areas are going to apply.”

Dyantyi said the application process for the first 705 flats remained open to residents from Bonteheuwel, Bokmakierie, Crossroads, District Six and other areas that will eventually form part of the N2 Gateway project.

“The N2 project is going to be benefit all the communities along the N2. That includes District Six, Crossroads, Bokmakierie, Bonteheuwel and other areas.

“We won’t leave them behind.”

To promote integration, the application process included residents of the traditionally coloured areas of Bokmakierie and Bonteheuwel.

Other residents were concerned that very few specifics were included in the information given by the housing department, and the city before them.

The meeting heard that:

Applications for housing in phase one of the N2 Gateway project close on Monday.

Phase one flats will be rental units.

Phase two will consist of 1 000 houses with yards. It was not clear how large these houses would be.

Rent for the flats would be between R165 and R200 for “small flats” and R690 for larger units.

Cape Argus

Allocation of Gateway units extended

The process of allocating the 705 completed housing units to all eligible beneficiaries on the N2 Gateway Housing Project at Langa on the Cape Flats could be extended until the end of the month. It was due to end on Monday.

The possible extension has emerged after Richard Dyantyi, Western Cape housing and local government minister, addressed hundreds of residents at a public meeting at Langa last night. Dyantyi says the allocation of residents to the double-storied flats will be done on an affordability basis. ~ SABC

NO Development without open transparent public participation and consultation!

InternAfrica has Joined FEDUP - in this monkeybusiness of local or national housing.

This has become a sideshow of note: Restraining our severe urge to comment harshly:

Gateway not supposed to follow rules - MEC

Housing and Local Government MEC Richard Dyantyi has shrugged off investigations by the DA-led City of Cape Town administration into N2 Gateway tenders, saying it was not intended that they would “follow normal bureaucracy”.

The need for houses was so urgent that the project had to be “fast-tracked”.

When the city council stopped playing “games”, the provincial and national governments’ doors would be “open for them to come back”, Dyantyi said during a debate in the National Council of Provinces.

“So what if work began before contracts were signed? This is a pilot project that we are testing in this province. So, if it happened that we put the first brick down before the contract was signed, so what?

“The houses are standing.”…

“The N2 project is not funds-driven, it is needs-driven,” Dyantyi said.

Idea: 5.2 Visionary Design: Circular Cities and Biomimicry

Conventional buildings are huge energy consumers, challenging those who aspire to use ecological principles and tap into nature’s solutions Some visionaries are going beyond energy efficiency and traditional techniques of passive solar heating, daylighting, and natural ventilation to take design in bold new directions. If the vision holds true, these cities will generate more power than they consume through smart building techniques and solar technology.

William McDonough, an architect and author of the landmark book Cradle to Cradle, contends that every material used in the manufacturing process should ultimately either biodegrade harmlessly or be reusable with no loss of quality.

World Urban Forum 3 - Actionable Ideas

Cannabrick reduce the carbon footprint. Naturally.

“Build a Cannabrick Home” Manual

N2 Gateway audit ‘to continue’

Cape Town - The forensic audit, ordered by the multi-party Cape Town government, into the N2 Gateway housing project will continue, Democratic Alliance MP Denise Robinson told the National Council of Provinces on Wednesday.

Robinson, a former city councillor, said this would happen in spite of Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s decision to kick the city - which in March voted the African National Congress out of the local government - off the project.

The project adjacent to the Joe Slovo informal settlement is not far from the city’s international airport.

Robinson said the new city government had, nevertheless, committed itself to finishing the N2 Gateway but only “as and when the national government made funds available”.

She noted that the project - expected to house 22 000 families - had cost nearly R135m more than originally intended.

As of June this year only 705 housing units were ready - 3% of the target.

The units, which were all rental units, would not be owned by their intended occupants “as they are completely unaffordable to the people most in need of homes”.

In addition the project was being built on a 50-year floodplain “adding to the city’s costs”, while contractors were still owed millions of rands. - FIN24

Lawyers warned city about N2 project firm

As the row over the controversial and costly N2 Gateway project flares again on Wednesday with renewed debate in the city and in parliament, the spotlight falls on a top-level hazard warning by lawyers more than a year ago.

It has emerged that in a confidential memorandum to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, provincial Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi and former mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo, Cape Town law firm Cheadle, Thompson & Haysom highlighted concerns about the appointment of Johannesburg firm Cyberia Technologies - an IT company - as project managers for the N2 Gateway scheme.

The lawyers’ investigation, in March 2005, was apparently commissioned by the political threesome, known as “M3″.

It is understood that the report found that while the tender adjudicators in the city rated Cyberia the least favourite of six rivals for the job, the council’s Goods and Services Property Advisory Board placed it first.

They lost millions as a result of the bungled handling of the development

The contract, which was eventually increased to more than R12m from R5m, was approved in a closed tender process.

More than R4m was injected into the project a month before Cyberia’s contract was terminated in January this year.

The city law firm’s memorandum concluded that while the appointment process may have been flawed, there was “no conclusive evidence of direct political interference in the process” or of “improper behaviour by the project managers”.

The memorandum does advise that “concerns about the competencies of the project managers” be dealt with.

It also highlights “possible problems in the procurement process” and the “lack of integration” between the three spheres of government involved.

It is apparent from the multimillion-rand cost overruns, and claims by developers who say they lost millions as a result of the bungled handling of the development that last year’s warnings were not heeded or acted on.

The row over the project escalated last week when Sisulu cut the city out of the project in the wake of Mayco’s pointed questioning of officials about who approved funding or issued instructions on the project.

Mayco decided it could not foot the bill for overruns or contractors’ claims until these questions were answered.

At the last Mayco meeting, councillors were told that some of the problems were “to a degree a result of poor project management and a lack of capacity in oversight on what those managers were doing at that time”.

The N2 Gateway controversy is a hot topic again today with a fresh round of debate in Mayco and also in the National Council of Provinces.

Several other housing matters account for a significant portion of Mayco’s 1 008-page agenda for its last meeting on Wednesday before the holiday recess starts.

Councillors are being asked to approve a key shift from delivering “full package” (a completed house) to “incremental” (site and service, or informal settlement upgrades) solutions, and also to find an extra R120m to push up the total delivery for the year from 8 000 to 20 000 “housing opportunities”.

A report notes “the present housing delivery approach is not denting the housing backlog significantly” and that “the demand of housing is more than the available resources” and needs accelerated delivery.

Mayco is being asked to enter into urgent discussions with the SA National Defence Force over the city’s plan to use Wingfield land to build about 4 200 houses. - Cape Argus

W Cape lags badly in low-cost housing

If figures issued by Statistics South Africa can be believed, the Western Cape lagged badly behind the other provinces in providing low-cost subsidised housing in the year ended March.

According to these figures, only 2 040 low-cost houses were built in the province in this period. This compares with 16 874 built in the Eastern Cape, 17 635 in the Free State, 21 603 in KwaZulu-Natal, 23 409 in Gauteng and 21 973 in Limpopo. These houses all cost just under R26 000.

However, the provision of low-cost housing in the Western Cape province has been on a downward path for some years. In 2002 a total of 19 534 houses were built. This number fell to 16 926 in 2003 and to 12 751 in 2004.

This does not seem sufficient to provide for the more than 30 000 people which Statistics South Africa reported migrate to the Western Cape every year.

In the private sector there are signs of some levelling off in new construction. In the four months ended April, local authorities approved the construction of new buildings worth R5.2 billion. This was 8.1% more than in the same period last year. However, when increases in costs are taken into account the physical volume of work is probably no more than last year.

There was a big increase in the first four months of this year in the number of small houses (less than 80m2) built. However, there was a marked falling off in the construction of new houses, flats and apartments. There was also a significant decline in cost increases and it seems possible that this and the reduced amount of business on offer could be connected.

Plans for 2 088 houses with a floor area of less than 80m2 were approved. The average cost was R67 562, which was only 1.6% above the 2005 price.

In contrast there was a distinct drop from last year in the number of houses planned with a floor area of 80m2 from 2 627 to 2 274.

But the average cost rose some 4% from R649 000 in the first four months of last year to R676 000 in the same period this year.

A little surprising was the decline in the number of flats and townhouses planned.

In the four months ended April this year only 1 603 were approved, which was sharply down from 1 941 last year. However, the 12% increase in average prices from R345 000 last year to R386 000 this year is possibly constraining developers.

But a development that should gladden the local construction industry is the big increase in the number of commercial buildings in the pipeline.

Plans for office and banking space costing R277 million were approved, which was 144% higher than last year. The amount of money to be spent on new industrial and warehousing space was also substantially higher, jumping 82% from R408m to R742m.

The strong increase in the cost of new buildings over the years has made it more effective for house owners to improve their existing houses.

This resulted in plans for additions and alterations to dwelling houses costing R1.24bn to be submitted to local authorities in the Western Cape for their approval this year.

Alterations and additions to non-residential buildings costing R444.5m were also approved. This was 16% more than last year.
The half-a-percent increase earlier this month in the interest rate is not likely to have much effect on the building industry.

The increase is seen as extremely modest and not likely to push up building costs.

Only if it is regarded as the start of a trend towards dearer money will the increase in rates begin to have an impact on building plans. - Cape Argus