The Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joscho) on Tuesday said it would build a housing development in Hillbrow that was expected to provide more than 400 ”very poor” residents with homes within two years.
The units are expected to be located in the heart of Hillbrow at a former nurses training college called BG Alexander.
When the refurbishment at the former college is complete, it will have 402 ”affordable, good quality, rental units”, said Joscho CEO Rory Gallocher. Rent would cost R600 a month.
”This first phase of the BG Alexander refurbishment offers communal-style accommodation which caters for the city’s very poor.
”While this type of accommodation does already exist in Johannesburg, it is the scale and quality of this development which is unprecedented,” said Gallocher.
The city of Johannesburg (CoJ) wanted to establish 1 500 beds to accommodate displaced residents or people in need of temporary acommodation.
”In one single building, Joscho will fulfil nearly one third of the CoJ’s targets,” said Gallocher.
Joscho had built nearly 2 000 housing units in the 2007/2008 financial year.
In its fifth year of operation, it had spent R182,8-million on developing housing and had earned income of R23,2-million from rentals and levies.
Joscho currently managed more than 5 000 affordable rental accommodation units and said it had reduced a 87% default on payments to only 6% since it started operations in 2006. – Sapa