Helping to fix housing and jobs backlog
Keeping shareholders happy by focusing on the bottom line and keeping people employed are two main reasons for businesses to stay in business.
Covid-19 has shifted that balance towards social responsibility.
Amdec, one of SAs ’ largest property groups, believes it has already crystal-balled the demand future and that both traditional high-end properties and affordable housing are essential.
Shelter and jobs must be government imperatives.
To this end, the group has approached the government with solutions to the 1.2 million unit housing backlog, which will, if rectified, go a long way to solving the Covid-19-driven 50% unemployment. But it wants the government to come to the party, both with funding and sprucing up its service delivery.
James Wilson, Amdec Group CEO, says property developers often have capacity, capital and expertise to make significant inroads in social housing, but are hamstrung by a lack of local government co-operation.
He said property developers had a moral responsibility to change SA’s course by building the homes, slashing the red tape, and providing the jobs.
“If local government is serious about creating jobs, it needs to eliminate the barriers and bureaucracy, become businessfriendly, and expedite the delivery of developments that will provide job opportunities on a large scale.”
Amdec, as with many other giant developers, faces a major perception problem.
While affordable housing must be in its basket of offerings, top-range properties are where the profits lie.
He said Harbour Arch, Amdec’s current star project, would inject R15bn into the
Cape Town CBD and was creating about 20,000 jobs during the construction phase alone and many thousands of permanent jobs post-construction in retail and hospitality.
This sort of project requires nothing from the government aside from agility in bureaucratic decision processes.
Affordable housing is a different story.
“Achieving social justice and equality needs private enterprise and public sector collaboration.
“Employment empowers people; it provides individuals with financial freedom and removes their reliance upon the state.
“However, bringing a complex like Harbour Arch to market is costly, time-consuming, and risky.
“Private developers have to contend with many varied groups of objectors who don’t appreciate the commercial realities of developing on this scale, or the job creation involved.”
On the other hand, he said, private developers had the capacity — and the desire — to assist in alleviating the affordable housing shortage.
“Affordable housing schemes are frequently not commercially viable. Homes need to be [government] subsidised to stay within the affordable price bracket.”
Amdec has experience in affordable housing.
In 2007 it turned 13 vacant office buildings in Johannesburg into a mixed-use precinct, providing affordable homes and recreation amenities for 1,500 young families.
Amdec’s proposed R500m, 1,000 apartment complex in Ottery, Cape Town, will have similar amenities to the Johannesburg precinct.
He said the application to start building, approved by the municipality, was a good example of a public-private partnership in alignment, solving shelter and job problems.
“With government assistance these large-scale mixed-use precincts boost the economy and provide thousands of critical job opportunities.
“This allows us to allocate significant company resources to delivering affordable housing in a market that is woefully undersupplied.”