More than 200 tenants of Jay Singh housing programme flats are being kicked out every month. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G
After more than a decade of protests and court battles — and a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) inquiry — residents of Durban’s “Jay Singh” housing complexes are finally to be given title deeds to their homes.
Last month, the eThekwini council passed a motion to hand residents of its social housing complexes, mainly in Phoenix, their title deeds, which the city’s executive committee endorsed on Tuesday, setting a two-month timeframe for tenants to get ownership as originally intended.
Despite this, social housing companies linked to Singh, an ANC benefactor, are continuing to evict residents of the complexes, which were built on city land with national and provincial government subsidies and which are meant to be rent controlled.
Singh died in 2020, but his companies are being run by his former wife, Shireen Annamalay, and his son, Ravi Jagadasen.
The SIU is in the process of trying to recover more than R400 million in subsidies paid to Gralio Precast, Woodglaze Holdings, First Metro and KZN Social Housing, which unlawfully sold the properties and began collecting market-related rentals.
The flats were built by Singh’s companies as part of the city’s social housing programme, using infill sites for what were meant to be rent-controlled or rent-to-own homes for residents earning too much to receive RDP houses and too little to qualify for bonds from private sector banks.
More than 2 500 flats were built, but about 1 200 were transferred to a Section 21 company owned by Anamalay and Jagadasen, who then collected subsidies from the Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA). They also collected about R3 million a month in rents, and sold some of the flats on the open market.
In 2014, residents formed the Phoenix Residents and Tenants Association and went to court over rental increases, sparking an investigation that resulted in the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) seizing several complexes over an unlawful R 236 million payment to Woodglaze by the SHRA.
The AFU seized R400 million in Singh’s assets and froze R100 million transferred into Woodglaze’s bank account, but the preservation order lapsed and the flats were returned to Woodglaze.
After several years of lobbying and court applications by the residents’ association, President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a proclamation authorising an investigation into the transactions by the SIU in 2021.
The report was completed and handed to the city several months ago, but has not been made public, while the SIU is understood to have filed an application to have R400 million paid over to the state through the special tribunal.
Earlier this year, the association filed an application to stop Woodglaze and other companies from evicting residents of the complexes who were unable to pay rentals of up to R4 000 for flats. Rentals for social housing projects are capped at R2 250.
The matter has been set down to be heard next month.
Last month the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Phoenix councillor, Jonathan Anippen, brought a motion before council, noting the “proposed beneficiaries have been exploited through prolonged tenancies and rentals which are outside of SHRA rental structure of between R350 and R2 250”.
In terms of the motion, which was opposed by the ANC, the council resolved to “identify all ‘developers’ who have benefitted from SHRA subsidies; to establish a register of all ‘rent-to-own’ beneficiaries and to ‘urgently regularise these beneficiaries’”.
Several days later, the residents association filed notice with the court, informing it of the council resolution, which it described as “an indication of the policy shift from the city that it intends to ensure secure tenure of residents of Phoenix by transferring the housing stock”.
On Tuesday, eThekwini executive committee confirmed the resolution and gave city manager Musa Mbhele two months to “execute the recommended actions and subsequently report back to the exco”.
Mervin Govender, chairperson of the residents’ association, welcomed the decision, but said they would submit their own list of intended beneficiaries to the council.
“We would like that resolution to be made an order of court and believe the municipality needs to bring a court application for a stay of all evictions, pending the completion of the regularisation process.”