STEVEN MANN, Cape Town | Tuesday 4.00pm.
ALTHOUGH over a million housing subsidies have been approved since 1994 and over four million people have been given homes, South Africa still has a housing backlog of some three million units and there is no money to build them.
“The current allocation to the housing budget is equivalent to less than 200000 subsidies per year, Housing Minister Sankie Mthembi Mahanyele told Parliament on Tuesday.
This is only sufficient to pay for the equivalent of the number of new households being established every year, but not to address the backlog.
Mthembi-Mahanyele said many people sold their subsidised houses as soon as they could and moved back to informal settlements.
“To counteract this problem we will be introducing a restriction to the title deed which will prevent resale of subsidised housing through a pre-emptive clause in favour of the government for a period of five years.”
This will enable local governments to buy back subsidised units and reallocate them to other families.
Mthembi-Mahanyele said the restriction will only apply to new houses.
The housing department received a budget of R3,33-billion in the 2000/1 financial year, of which almost R3-billion was allocated for housing subsidies.
Some 40% of the subsidies are expected to be allocated to hosueholds headed by women, Mthembi-Mahanyele said.