GROUNDUP HOUSELESSNESS CRISIS OP-ED: Time to replace the outdated one-plot-one-house model to address SA’s housing crisis

s that 75% of this growth will be in cities and large regional centres. Even without this growth, current levels of housing delivery cannot meet existing demand.Municipalities, major role-players in the delivery of public housing, continue to lack technical capacity for delivery at significant scale.

So what is to be done about this seemingly intractable problem which is set to intensify over the next decade, as the young population matures and forms new households, and the urbanised population explodes? Clearly, our past strategies have been ineffective and new, more imaginative, solutions are needed. We need to tackle this problem with far more boldness, imagination, innovation, and collaboration.

Such audacious projects require the highest level of inter-governmental cooperation, significant technical competence, wide-ranging buy-in and hefty funds. Unsurprisingly, mega-housing projects have been known to fail because of the complexity involved. Engagement of all sectors of society and tiers of government will be required to minimise the risk of failure.

This is why it is worrying when municipalities, like the Makana Local Municipality in Makhanda, move toward handing over stands in informal settlements to poor households. Low-density housing developments are not a response to the contemporary housing challenges in South African cities. We need to recognise that the time for approaches, such as this, which lead to the perpetuation of low-density housing is long gone.

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