Rid city of shacks by enabling jobless to build durable homes

THERE are many unknowns when one moves to a city but building one’s own sturdy house on a 500m² plot where one can grow a couple of tons of food need not be one of them.

The unknowns are daunting enough: where to go, selling up, buying in, farewells and new accommodation, schools, friends, customs, jobs, language and places are all harrowing. Moving to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape can be more stressful than going to Perth. Pictures of angry people dumping plumbing in the street tells of desperate and seriously traumatised lives away from home.

Those who come to Cape Town therefore must surely know all about the pain and indignity of living cheek by jowl in a shack made of rickety and rusty old bits and pieces which catch fire and flood, where preventable diseases and deaths flourish and danger lurks.

The upside is better free schools, and health care. Then it surely won’t be long before one is connected to water pipes and electric cables. Eventually one will get a house, even if it takes thirty years. And then one may even find a job. One can also rely on the R275 per month child support grant, like the other 17 million – one third of the population – who now qualify for social security benefits.

That is all plain, but why does the city allow these informal settlements and their one quarter of a million “shelters” as they define them in their zoning scheme: “accommodation… which may be constructed of any material whatsoever, even though such material may not comply with the standards of durability intended by the National Building Act.” A proper kennel is more desirable.

The city cannot stop people wanting to live here nor can it demolish so many structures.

But if they took the trouble to study their own statistics there is the same number of unemployed as there are “shelters”. So a viable plan to rid the city of shacks would be to enable the unemployed to build their own durable homes on 500m² plots on which a ton or two of food can be grown, enough for a family of four. That way the unemployed can at least live in a proper house with toilets and feed themselves. Who would then be protesting?

The deputy mayor, Alderman Ian Neilson, has protested that “the availability of bulk services is the overall limiting factor on development”. But adequate services can be built by residents using alternate technologies like harvesting water from roofs and hard surfaces, as well as using gravel roads not tarmac. Modern biogas systems use human and vegetable waste for heating, cooking and lighting needs, as they do throughout India and China.

The area of land needed for a city of a quarter of a million dwellings like this is some 14 000 hectares, nearly five times the size of Wescape, the planned new mini-city at Melkbosstrand, but less than 6 percent of the city’s total area. The land needs to be arable and located near clay deposits for bricks. Quick rail or bus access will be needed, a city priority anyway.

The biggest drawback will be the land costs unless the city takes the necessary steps to halt the illegal practice of owners holding land vacant for years on end. There is no land which is zoned as “not to be used” except in environmentally sensitive areas.

Owners of such land have no plans to work it but they are gambling on capital gains. They have had a record run. Average city house plots have risen 14times since 1994 to ±R550 000 according to Absa, more for smallholdings, and some four times faster than the consumer price index. This appears to be a world-record price hike.

Yet land prices are entirely unearned. As the population grows, the amenities, services, roads and public transport are improved and population rises so the city becomes a more and more desirable destination. Land prices must therefore rise unless the increases are captured by the city through rates and taxes surcharges.

This is exacerbated because owners pay rates on improvements as well as land. If the city charged rates on land only then would this transfer of wealth to property owners reduce because holding costs would rise.

The moral is that cities have no business subsidising land prices and that decent three-bedroom houses can be handbuilt on land which is paid for monthly, not by an unaffordable single outlay.

Perhaps madame Mayor can explain why the city cannot create 250 000 selfemployed jobs by citizens hand-building houses and also feeding themselves.

Meakin is a registered professional valuer and an associate of the Institute of Valuers SA.