The City of Johannesburg alone has over three million inhabitants (www.joschco.co.za), many of whom lack basic housing, services and infrastructure. The provision of affordable low cost housing has been and continues to be a major issue across the South African political and developmental landscape.
In a recent General Household Survey about
“one fifth of South African households live in stat-subsidies homes”, with 13% of respondents having at least one family member on a waiting list for RDP housing. (www.masterbuilders.co.za).
This is, of course, not taking into account the multitude of people currently living in informal settlements, many of whom have no access to basic plumbing, sanitation or electricity.
Since 1994, the governments promises to provide affordable low cost housing and government subsidised housing have continually fallen short. Is this a product of unrealistic, over-zealous claims from government? Perhaps. Is government entirely to blame though? Could it be that the sheer magnitude of this problem alone prevents the actual deliverable becoming a reality?
In a recent media statement by the department of human settlements, The Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KZN and Free State are all significantly behind in their low cost housing delivery targets, due to under spending on grants. Last year Minister Toyko Sexwale has explained non-delivery and under-spending by citing “fundamental problems with bulk infrastructure delivery”. However, according to the recent report “lack of capacity and poor management skills” is to blame for this problem. (www.sabinetlaw.co.za).
By all accounts, it appears that allocation of funds is not the primary problem here. Neither is the provision of affordable low cost housing itself – numerous bodies and companies exist specialising in constantly finding more cost-effective ways to build these houses and to allocate funds.
Delivery Partners
One such body which appears to have played a major contributory role is the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC), established in 1996, is a development finance institution, aimed at reducing the housing backlog by raising and deploying finance from outside sources to the public sector. (www.info.gov.co.za)
Another body is the Social Housing Foundation (SHF), a not-for-profit organisation, aiming to build capacity for social-housing institutions.
Current issues
While the provision of low cost housing remains the focus, it appears that many problems exist in low cost housing communities that have already been built. A recent study conducted by the University of Stellenbosch found that “the government’s housing policy may be doing more harm than good by placing too many people in too small a space.” (www.abahlali.org). According to the findings, the problem stems from the growth of “back-yard shacks”, which is a smaller shack erected behind the original house to earn extra rent. The resultant impact of this is overcrowding in an area for which basic plumbing has been catered, but the plumbing provided is unable to handle the burgeoning volumes.
The problem is thus two-fold; government appears to be buckling under the pressure to keep up with housing demand – whether this is ultimately due to budget constraints, population growth issue, misallocation of funds or incapable MEC’s is up for debate. The reality is that all of these factors play a role. The other key problem is unstoppable population growth in low cost housing communities that have been erected by government – which ultimately ends up in a “squatter camp” type of situation all over again, with the only difference being formerly built structures.
One thing is clear – this problem is one which South Africa has not yet gotten a real handle on – and the successful provision of affordable low cost housing continues to elude the very people in whose hands we have place this mammoth task.