/ 6 February 2007

Finding a place for Johannesburg’s poorest

Johannesburg is the metropolis of Africa, the hub to which people flock in search of money, success and a better life. Over the years, the posh and thriving inner city has slowly fallen into disrepair, its levels of crime increasing and abandoned buildings being converted into slums to house the poor.

In the lead-up to the 2010 Soccer World Cup, a surge of redevelopment strategies is aimed at making the city a top international destination. Regeneration programmes range from cleaning up the inner city to the development of better housing and entertainment facilities — but some say the new focus on the inner city has lost sight of the needs of its core inhabitants: the urban ultra-poor.

Reports on the state of the inner city were released last year by the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), as well as Trafalgar, a property-management company. Both reports cite increased optimism among residents and investors, and an increase in inner-city property values. An inner-city summit is set to take place this year.

However, there are still areas where the city is lagging behind. The Trafalgar report, for instance, finds that Johannesburg still needs a more comprehensive social housing programme to deal with the needs of its poorest people.

Neil Fraser, an urban consultant and board member of the JDA, says the city ”hasn’t shown a plan for the inner-city poor”. Even most of Johannesburg’s ”low-cost” housing initiatives are targeted at low- to middle-income earners instead of the very poor.

Tanya Winkler, a researcher with the Centre for Urban and Built Environment Studies (Cubes) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), says the JDA report indicates how inner-city progress can be achieved — but the area’s residents should not be isolated through such regeneration programmes.

”Are we pushing for gentrification to the extent that current residents of the inner city won’t be able to afford to live there?” she asks.

Evictions

It is not just a case of no housing being provided. ”People are being taken out of housing they already occupy,” says Stuart Wilson, of Wits’ Centre for Applied Legal Studies.

”They are pushing the poor out,” he says, referring to projects like the Better Buildings Programme (BBP). Launched in 2003, it offers derelict buildings in high arrears to renovators in exchange for a rates rebate.

The problem with the BBP, he says, is that it forces the ”ultra-poor” to seek other accommodation that they usually cannot afford. The city ”focus[es] on redevelopment first and on what happens to the poor after”.

These ultra-poor depend on the inner city for their everyday survival, as they have ”informal livelihood strategies” such as parking cars and vending on the side of the road.

A Johannesburg city official who prefers to remain anonymous denies that the city operates in this way. ”The city recognises that people come here [to Johannesburg] for access to opportunities,” he says. ”There is a formally mandated council strategy to try and transform the city in a way that the poor don’t have to go anywhere else.”

He admits that there are some in big business who ”don’t care what happens to the poor” and who feel that regeneration of the inner city is meant to attract those who can afford higher rentals — and lure back businesses that have fled the area.

But this is not the city’s view. ”I can’t say everything [that we can do] is being done … but it is a complex and difficult task,” the official says. ”Work is under way in order to find solutions.”

Transitional housing initiatives have been set up to deal with the city’s very poor. Last year, with the help of Metro Evangelical Services (MES) and the Johannesburg Trust for the Homeless, the once-dilapidated Europa Hotel was refurbished and turned into a low-cost communal housing project. The Europa is part of the BBP.

Court intervention

The BBP has now been curtailed by a 2006 high court ruling that prevents the city from evicting even illegal tenants of a building unless it provides suitable city-centre accommodation for them. The programme is still running, but ”very, very slowly”, Fraser says. ”It is fraught with legal difficulties.”

”It’s a start,” Wilson says about projects like the Europa — but about one-third of inner-city’s residents are among the ultra-poor, and most of the recent housing schemes still do not cater for them.

Another state housing initiative is the Johannesburg Housing Company’s (JHC) Brickfields, a neat new housing complex in Newtown.

The JDA’s Fraser says initiatives like Brickfields are ”not meant for the very, very poor”; they are intended for middle-income earners, a huge housing-demand segment in the inner city. Cubes’s Winkler says a recent survey shows that many of Brickfields’ households include at least one professional.

Winkler adds that although the city is doing much good work, it tends to rely too much on the private sector. ”Often the focus is on public-private partnerships at the cost of social inner-city community projects … The public-private model is not the only model [for rejuvenation] … they should work from below, using community organisations.”

‘You can’t zone culture’

Iain Low, of the University of Cape Town’s school of architecture, says the country needs a comprehensive, 50-year plan to deal with development of the major cities. However, he adds that ”in this country there is no real planning … there is a reactive instead of a proactive approach”.

”The problem with urban developers is that they build buildings without building communities,” he says. ”[Planning] should be part of a bigger idea … communities should come first.”

”You can’t zone culture,” he adds, saying that projects that develop so-called ”cultural arcs” and ”arts precincts” ignore the existing heterogeneous nature of such areas.

Historically, buildings were about relationships between people, and community development was the driving force of structural planning — something that has been lost in recent times, Low says. ”[Today planning is] technocratic rather than community driven.”

South Africa also needs to contend with the legacy of apartheid. ”The biggest legacy of apartheid is its spatiality … [They] have changed the laws, but not how people live,” he says.

For Winkler, the emphasis needs to be on the social consciousness of the inner city. ”Social projects are embedded in the five pillars [a strategy by the city that comprises urban management, good infrastructure, regeneration, eliminating sinkholes and encouraging ripple effects].

For Winkler, the emphasis needs to be on the social consciousness of the inner city. Referring to the city’s ”five-pillar” strategy — comprising urban management, good infrastructure, regeneration, the elimination of sinkholes and the prompting of ripple effects — she says: ”[Inner-city] social projects are embedded in the five pillars — But because they are embedded, they are not focused on. There is a need for an added approach.”

It’s a long-term strategy, she adds. An inner-city project can be a 10- to 20-year endeavour — and that’s not taking into account a lack of continuity and consistency in government departments.

”We need to sit down and deal with the situation to find solutions,” Fraser agrees. ”And solutions can be found.”