Unemployment-induced poverty was causing many government housing beneficiaries to move back into shacks, a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) report revealed on Tuesday.
”Unemployment is undermining South Africa’s housing delivery strategy,” researcher Catherine Cross told reporters in Pretoria.
Although the government’s housing delivery strategy had made many gains, and had the potential of success, ”under the current situation of high unemployment, it is probably an expensive gamble”, she added.
The HSRC released a report on poverty in Gauteng, which Cross said was probably also an accurate reflection of trends elsewhere in the country.
”Serviced housing alone is not going to be enough to overcome poverty,” she said.
”There will have to be jobs. It is becoming more and more difficult for people to stay in the houses they’ve got.”
Government housing delivery was supposed to enable beneficiaries to accumulate an asset base and invest in their future.
But because of unemployment and poverty, many were being unable to afford ordinary household running costs.
Even two social grants per household, in the absence of any other income, were often not enough to make a difference, Cross said.
She questioned the government’s ability to eradicate shack settlements by 2014, and predicted ”a permanent entrenchment of shack areas” as the country’s worst case scenario.
She could not say when this point was likely to be reached at the current rate, but said it was not too late to turn the tide.
”I don’t think we are anywhere near the point of no return. We are in a sticky situation, but not lost,” Cross said.
Solutions included cities, the government, business and organised labour working together to create sustainable jobs — although she could not say how this would be achieved.
The HSRC study found that 32% of ”poverty pockets” in Gauteng were not in shack settlements but in metro areas with formal housing and services.
”Many poverty pockets already have formal housing and are still poor. A lot of them are so poor that they may lose their houses and slide back into shacks.”
The study revealed that rural-to-urban migration was not the only cause of poverty in cities, as many policy makers seemed to think.
A bigger problem was cities’ inability to generate sustainable employment.
But urban migration by people seeking a better life threatened to bankrupt cities, Cross said. An accumulating burden of poverty alleviation programmes may undermine city budgets, with subsidies attracting even more migrants.
”Is there a reason to be afraid? To some extent probably.”
Possible solutions included the use of incentives like easy access to housing and service sites, to steer migration to ”sustainable” places.
Ways should also be found to make it easier for people who have received government houses to keep them, perhaps through offering easy savings options. – Sapa