July 13, 2005
By Ndaba Dlamini
WITH an estimated 215 000 households living in informal settlements and backyard shacks, the City has a major task on its hands to provide adequate housing for its residents.
However, its housing department has an ambitious housing master plan in place that will create sustainable, affordable and safe housing opportunities for the city's indigent and homeless by 2009.
The plan maps out "a co-ordinated and realistic course of action" for each financial year to respond to the changing housing needs of the city on a short- to medium-term basis, according to the housing department.
"The Housing Master Plan was developed to address the housing challenges in the City. It is a five-year plan which will be reviewed at the end of the initial five-year period. The implementation of this plan is subject to the approval of housing subsidies by Gauteng province," says Uhuru Nene, the executive director in the department.
In the past, with no implementation plan, housing delivery was haphazard and mostly on a reactive basis. This resulted in an unco-ordinated delivery of services, says Patrick Shao, the housing department deputy director.
Informal settlements
In partnership with the Gauteng department of housing, the plan will lead to informal settlements being formalised, hostels being upgraded and suitable land for housing being identified.
Informal settlements will be given essential services like water and sanitation, roads and storm water infrastructure. The process is expected to result in opening township registers and issuing title deeds to people living in the settlements.
"During the 2005/2006 financial year, we expect to formalise 29 informal settlements around the city," Shao says.
By the end of 2006 informal settlements will boast of named streets, which will improve access to services such as emergency and security units. Plans are also under way to fence stands in informal settlements as a way to combat internal growth.
The City was expecting to have serviced about 35 000 stands in informal settlements by June, through the water and sanitation programme. However, it managed to service 20 000. The water and sanitation programme will form the basis for the People's Housing Process, where people are required to build their own homes.
The plan aims to have established formal townships, among others, in the informal settlements of Sophiatown, numbering 1 168 shacks, Freedom Charter A and B with a population of 9 908 shacks and Slovo Park, comprising 1 052 shacks in 2006 and 2007.
According to City records, there are about 55 066 families living in 39 informal settlements in Soweto alone. Projects have been implemented to address the needs of about 48 700 families living in 27 informal settlements.
Some of these, including Dlamini, Eikenhof, Mshenguville and Thembelihle, will be relocated to Vlakfontein West, a greenfield housing project.
A greenfield project is one that is undertaken in an area where unoccupied land is developed as part of a new township, or it is a project that is undertaken in an existing township where an undeveloped parcel of land is utilised for development purposes.
The Vlakvontein West project, or Lehae, located in the south-western quadrant of the intersection of the Golden Highway and the R554 road to Lenasia, is expected to yield 6 700 housing units.
Backyard shacks
In March this year Gauteng MEC for housing Nomvula Mokonyane launched the Top Twenty Townships Programme in Orlando, Soweto, in an effort to "provide housing opportunities to communities and families that are currently renting backyard shacks".
Because of the influx of immigrants and a shortage of housing, there is an estimated 35 717 families living in backyard shacks and about 9 721 families living in backyard rooms in Joburg.
"The Top Twenty Townships Programme is aimed at residents living in backyard rooms and shacks in Zola and Orlando. Many of the residents will be moved to Kliptown, one of the mayoral priority housing projects," Shao says.
To date the City has managed to convert 400 hostel units into family units. Hostels in Orlando West have been upgraded and completed while work on the Dube Hostel, the Diepsloot Staff Hostel and M2 Hostel is "90 percent complete", according to Shao.
Doornkop housing project, another greenfield project, is expected to house people from backyard shacks or rooms who have registered on the provincial waiting list. Doornkop is located in the south of Johannesburg in Region 6.
The project is expected to deliver about 25 000 residential units in the next financial year. Doornkop also has the potential for social, commercial and industrial developments.
Yet another project that is expected to ease housing blues is the Greater Zandspruit project, located in Region 5 east of Beyers Naude Drive and north of the Zandspruit River near Honeydew. Zandspruit comprises the Zandspruit Transit Camp, the Mayibuye Project and a portion of land that has been earmarked for future housing development.
An estimated 5 240 households in Zandspruit need housing. There are currently about 1 200 households in the transit camp, 440 in the Mayibuye Project and an estimated 3 600 have invaded private land.
Zandspruit, according to initial projections, is expected to yield 3 200 housing units when it is formalised. About 2 000 households will probably not be accommodated within the area.
Diepsloot
Diepsloot, a sprawling, densely populated settlement of formal and informal dwellings in the north of Johannesburg, is one of many areas where housing is needed as a matter of urgency. Diepsloot comprises the formal townships of Diepsloot West, Diepsloot West Extensions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9, which comprise about 7 139 households.
Diepsloot has its fair share of households which do not have decent accommodation. About 15 900 households live in informal settlements, of which 3 900 live in Diepsloot West's backyard shacks. Diepsloot has a capacity for about 8 139 formal housing units and the existing urban development boundary cannot be further extended.
An area twice the size of Diepsloot will be needed to address the remaining 14 900 households' housing needs who will remain living in informal structures.
Decent housing is being built in Ivory Park, a township in the north-west of Johannesburg. The housing need there is estimated at 18 000 houses.
The Elcon Joint reconstruction and development programme (RDP) housing project is running in Diepsloot Extensions 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 9. It will yield 1 228 housing units in 2004/05. A private sector unsubsidised housing development, Tanganani, and the Diepsloot Mayibuye projects in Extension 5, will in turn produce 742 units.
Cosmo City
The long-awaited
Cosmo City project, a City of Johannesburg and Gauteng housing department initiative, has finally got off the ground and will go a long way to reducing Johannesburg's housing backlog.
Planned for 12 500 houses, it will be complete by the end of 2007. Four different types of housing will be constructed on the 1 100 hectare site. These include:
- 5 000 fully subsidised units of 32 square metres on plots of 250 square metres. Only those people earning less than R1 500 a month qualify for these houses;
- 3 000 credit-linked units, which are partially subsidised and 60 square metres in size. People earning R3 500 a month will qualify for these houses;
- 3 300 fully bonded houses that will be sold on the open market; and
- 1 000 institutional units that will be flats for rent.
Residents from the nearby informal settlements of Zevenfontein and Zandspruit will benefit from the project.
Alexandra
In the north of Joburg is Alexandra, a sprawling township mostly made up of shacks and backyard rooms. The current population of Alexandra, affectionately known as "Alex", is estimated at 350 000, with about 4 060 formal houses and 34 000 shacks.
The housing need in Alexandra stands at 22 000 to 25 000 houses, but the township can only accommodate about 9 300 units. Already, 1 158 units have been built under the Alex Urban Renewal project (ARP). Construction on the Marlboro Gardens, Westlake and Frankenwald housing projects has begun, with 5 300 rental units being built.
The challenge for the City, however, is to implement its policy on relocations. In 2001 in the first phase of the ARP project, 11 000 residents were moved from the banks of the Jukskei River, where they were in danger from yearly floods. They were moved to Diepsloot and Braamfischerville, in Soweto.
During the 2004/05 financial year, the City spent about R340-million on projects in the housing master plan and an estimated R233-million will be spent during the 2005/06 financial year, according to Shao.
"The master plan delivers per financial year. Since 2004, the City has managed to deliver in terms of top structures more than 20 000 housing units and over 20 000 service sites in the past financial year."
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