Housing list getting longer

“EC’s great RDP crisis” (DD, April 5) refers:

It will take about 46 years for the EC department of human settlements to address its backlog of 400 000 RDP houses at the current delivery rates.

In the article the department said it built 12 979 RDP houses two years ago, 11 090 last year and this year it envisaged building 8 567.

The trend according to provincial human settlements department spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha, is that the budget for human settlements is decreasing year-on-year.

So even if the subsidy amount per house stays the same, if the department gets less money it means it can build fewer houses each year.

We also have to take into account that the current 400 000 backlog excludes new houses needed for people who are growing up now who will need a house in future. In other words somebody born today, in 21 years’ time – almost halfway to reaching 46 years – may join the housing queue but will still not be counted as part of the current housing backlog.

To date government has not provided a clear solution as to how it is going to rapidly address the need for 400 000 houses in the Eastern Cape.

At its 54th national conference in December 2017 the ANC resolved that “site and service schemes” need to be considered as one of the options for solving low income housing needs in SA cities (54th national conference report and resolution, Social Transformation Resolution Clause 3.11).

This is in line with what Afesis-corplan has been suggesting over the years in that government needs to do three things: one, to provide land with tenure security for those who qualify and are in need; two, provide access to at least basic services so people can live in dignity; and three, to introduce a housing support programme so people can be helped to help themselves to progressively achieve and realise the right to housing as required by the constitution. For those unable to help themselves, such as the aged and people with disabilities, government should still provide an RDP house.

During a site visit to Duncan Village on April 6 the Minister of Human Settlements, Nomaindia Mfeketo was asked whether her department was considering site and service to help make inroads into the huge housing backlog. She said government was not because it did not want to create “another toilet city”.

Is it therefore acceptable to government that hundreds of thousands of households continue to wait for up to 46 years in informal settlements and other poor living conditions for RDP houses?

If not, what is the minister’s solution?

Her solution appears to be to build more RDP houses; but that is the same solution that got us into this problem in the first instance.

Given the current human settlement budget allocations, government can no longer continue to think it will rapidly address the housing backlog by continuing to build RDP houses. It needs to come up with some other way to address the housing backlog.

Managed land settlement, together with an expanded upgrading of informal settlements programme, has the potential to be this other way. The sooner this mindshift occurs the sooner we can start to make significant inroads into the housing backlog and also start to plan for human settlement opportunities for those still to join the housing wait list. — Ronald Eglin is a specialist for sustainable settlements at Afesis-corplan