IN its ongoing search for innovative solutions to the housing crisis, the Ministry of Housing’s special task team this week proposed new approaches to break the deadlock between financial institutions and developers, which is holding up housing delivery.
In a report released this week, it also urged the various arms of the government involved in housing to set clear targets, disclose decisions and speed up the processing of approvals as well as its approach to the public.
“It is common cause that the public sector is parodied as inefficient, and that it serves itself rather than the public, and seldom with civility,” the task team said.
The report has been presented to Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele, who will consider its recommendations before making a final decision on the proposals.
Chaired by Department of Housing Director General Billy Cobbett, the task team said the delivery of subsidised housing was now showing “a marked increase”, with about 10 000 subsidies being paid out monthly by the state.
Between June 1995 and May 1996, banks had made available R3,08-billion in credit for housing, of which R765-million was for subsidised housing.
But large-scale developers and banks “remain largely uninvolved” in the market for houses valued at between R18 000 and R50 000, “often blaming each other and the state for their non-involvement”.
The task team said the government “should resist the temptation to merely attack and scapegoat the private sector while it still has too many deficiencies of its own to resolve.
“Indeed, the past few months have seen some significant shifts within the private sector where a greater willingness to engage and take higher levels of risk has been displayed with commendable results.”
It said it was also concerned that there was still an emphasis on “one-family-one-plot” type of housing developments, “which, in planning terms, is a disaster”.
This posed the “very real danger” of apartheid-style housing patterns being repeated, while also preventing the provision of more affordable housing options.
It also criticised the emphasis on individual ownership rather than other forms of “social” security of tenure, such as schemes run by housing associations on a share block basis.
The task team recommended that the present state subsidy be standardised at R15 000, which would be matched rand for rand by local authorities or employers and granted to people earning less than R2 500 a month.
It was hoped this would, in particular, encourage employers to start providing housing for their workers.
For large-scale projects, the R525-million set aside for housing in the Reconstruction and Development Programme would be used to help provide 150 000 low cost, high density units over the next four years.
The task team said R400-million would be used to underwrite commercial risks and R100-million would be invested in joint ventures with the private sector.