The housing crisis: Three lively responses to this newspaper’s recent coverage
Simplistic solutions to the housing crisis will bring unintended results — such as the apartheid-style settlement of the poor away from cities, argues Dr Angela Tait
It is beginning to sound rather hollow to blame the housing shortage on the backlog inherited by the Government of National Unity. Two years later, the rate of delivery is worse even than in the final years of apartheid. The 10 000 houses built in the last 18 months account for only one of every 40 new houses needed to keep pace with population increase, and does not even touch the 2,9-million
The slow delivery of housing is inexcusable, but does the solution lie simply in the release of land? Dominic Tweedie (M&G January 5 to 11) seems to think so. He tells us ”the problem is not housing, but homelessness, and that the first need of the homeless is land … undeveloped land is cheap — cheap enough for even squatters to afford to buy”.
”Cheap” land? That is almost always found only on the periphery of cities, and then a host of other problems arises: where do the poor make a living? What does it cost them to travel to and from work? What money, and what time, will they have spare to be able to build houses on their newly acquired land?
And how much more money must the economy find to provide expensive bulk infrastructure, and to pay for comparatively high operating costs, when the infrastructure and services in the cities are not fully utilised? What land will be left on the cities’ edge for agricultural development? Or tourist development? Or just plain healthy open countryside? Underwriting all these costs will be the responsibility of the state. How cheap is it then?
Now, while it is true that releasing land is a necessary step to ”kick-start” housing delivery, it has to be realised that the homeless must have secure tenure, since without that the Housing Boards will not even consider a housing subsidy. But we still have a long way to go to facilitate secure tenure for poor people.
Locating the poor, black majority of the population away from the formal economic generators of our country is reminiscent of apartheid planning. Is this what Tweedie intends by welcoming initiatives that will regain the ”convenient city life as we have known it”? Or that rid the cities of the ”squatters on every doorstep, harrowing scenes of eviction and brutal conflict”? Probably not. But proposing simplistic solutions to complex problems can have unwanted
Tweedie accuses the ”old guard”, quite rightly perhaps, of developing a housing policy that is divorced from development planning. But does his solution — distributing cheap land — take into account the complexities of development planning any more than the developer-driven interests that informed the current housing policy?
This policy assumes the poor will ”top up” their subsidies with bank loans. For those who can secure additional finance there are well- thought-through mechanisms to facilitate delivery. But 70% of the poor cannot raise loans, so they have no chance of securing tenure on well-located land.
The Development Facilitation Act could trigger the release of well-located public land for housing. But since few families will be able to buy this land at current market prices, measures will be needed to make it affordable to the poor. And these measures must ensure that this land is affordable for the poor in the long term, preventing speculation by property developers, for instance. Furthermore, if this land is going to be used efficiently, additional mechanisms will be necessary to facilitate higher density housing delivery as well.
The housing department and board need to shift their attention to the needs of the ”unbankable poor” in a way that balances the short and long-term costs of all the factors affecting housing — including transport, energy, employment, infrastructure, and so on, in addition to seeking innovative ways to ensure security of tenure for those most in need of well-located housing.
In the absence of sound planning, with long- term sustainable objectives, squatters will stay on the cities’ doorsteps. For the majority of the poor though, releasing land in the way Tweedie suggests provides the answer to his own question ”Where shall be houses for all?” They will be well out of the cities, and well out of sight, entrenching apartheid planning all the more.
Tait represents the Development Action Group. DAG is an NGO working around housing and urban development in the Western Cape