Housing agency to speed delivery
Vivian Warby
22 February 2008South Africa will continue to speed up housing delivery to ensure it meets its target of providing people living in informal settlements around the country with formal housing by 2014, says Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Speaking at the government's social cluster media briefing in Cape Town last week, Tshabalala-Msimang said the Department of Housing had made eradicating slums its priority, and would also implement lessons learnt from its Breaking New Ground strategy.
The department will also support the various provinces with enabling legislation and other processes to prevent the growth of existing informal settlements and the creation of new informal settlements around the country's towns and cities.
She said the government aimed to increase its current delivery rate from 300 000 to 500 000 housing units per year, and the national department of housing would directly assist provinces to improve their project management capacity and streamline their planning processes to ensure faster delivery.
In addition, the department would continue to focus on increasing the number of affordable housing for those who earn between R3 500 and R7 500 a month, through the memorandum of understanding signed with the country's major banks.
Tshabalala-Msimang said she hoped the National Council of Provinces would pass the Social Housing Act into legislation shortly, enabling the subsidisation of various forms of rental accommodation, thereby helping eradicate informal settlements.
"Non-governmental organisations and the private sector will be encouraged to participate in the programme and access the grants that will become available through this Act," she said. "We are hoping that this will go a long way to alleviate the shortage of rental accommodation and encourage innovation in the rental market."
She added that the new homes that will be built around the country would have to be energy-efficient, with the housing department finalising energy regulations that will become part of national building regulations.
The National Homebuilders Registration Council (NHBRC) would continue to monitor building contractors and will have the authority to stop any contractor who does confirm to the minimum standards set by the government.
Housing Development Agency
A moratorium on the sale of land by municipalities will ensure an additional supply of parcels of well-located land, which will instead be transferred to the Housing Development Agency, which will be created this year.
The agency will enable the government to finally redress apartheid spatial planning, by releasing well-located land and serviced sites - acquired mainly from logistics company Transnet and the Department of Public Works - for human settlement programmes.
Once the Bill is signed, Thubelisha Homes and Servcon will be integrated into the newly created agency.
"We are expecting the [Housing Delivery Agency] to serve as a catalyst for social cohesion, racial integration, job creation, and economic growth," Tshabalala-Msimang said.
Source: BuaNews
