Get Land, Build a House: LANDfirst Principles
By Thembi Mabhula
It is apparent, beyond a shred of doubt, that one way or another policy review is necessary regarding the Low Cost Housing policy. An approach that encourages people to get land then build a house would help to bridge housing delivery processes and assist in clearing the current low cost housing backlogs.
The quest for houses, particularly among the urban poor, has reached boiling point right across South Africa, marked by violent protests and serious disquiet over broken promises by the government. The government for the past sixteen years has managed to provide free low cost houses to millions of urban poor South Africans and yet one startling fact remains that there are still millions of urban poor in various urban areas waiting for their turn to be issued with a key to a free low cost house. The government had failed millions of people who were living in appalling conditions in informal settlements, and President Jacob Zuma stated that efforts to explain to them why this was so after more than a decade and a half of democracy would be meaningless (Mbanjwa, 2010).
Still the government keeps on making promises as it did in the past, while each budget year the housing delivery process dramatically slows down. Recently, about 600 members of the 1996-2000 Housing Waiting Committee in Johannesburg marched to the offices of the Department of Human Settlement in Gauteng to hand over their memorandum of demands. They claim that they registered for RDP houses as far back as 1996 and that they are being sidelined. One of the marchers said, “We live in backrooms, hence nobody notices us.” In response, acting chief operations officer of the department, Bongani More, said, “In Gauteng we have all these issues all the time and we attend to all of them,” (Molefe, 2010). There are hardly any such protests among the rural poor. Rural areas are relatively quiet, which is a complete contrast to what is happening in urban places.
The government needs to device innovative strategies of cutting down the huge housing backlog. Land tenure security is definitely one such creative means that can be used to fast-track the housing delivery process. Land tenure security implies that the beneficiary is granted guaranteed occupation rights on a site and can then begin to build a house using his/her own resources or savings.
The route involved in providing a low cost house goes through tedious processes that involve technical and environmental feasibility studies and beneficiary subsidy processes, which collectively entail so much red-tape, are time consuming and ultimately terribly protracted. It is absolutely necessary that feasibility studies get done prior to occupation of land by beneficiaries, but it is equally imperative to shorten processes. Some of the activities can be conducted when beneficiaries are already settled on the land.
The process applied by rural authorities when allocating sites to their subjects demonstrates the LANDfirst approach perfectly. The process is amazingly quicker and far less time consuming in comparison with that of the urban areas. What we need to learn is that land is allocated first and the beneficiary then occupies the land and builds a shelter from his/her savings and resources without any government subsidy. People who have acquired sites start off with temporary shelters, but through an incremental process get to build beautiful permanent structures.
The Case of Sandile in Tsholomnqa Area
A beautiful eye-catching example of this type of settlement can be seen at Sandile, a rural settlement about 44km from East London. According to Vusumzi Seyisi, who is both a resident and chairperson of the Sandile Village Committee, the new settlement was planned by the community and an interim committee was set up to run the new project. They planned a sustainable community, which initially accommodated a brick-making project that would provide an opportunity for people to buy bricks locally at a cheaper price. The project also provided employment opportunities for the local people. They planned proper streets and more than 100 sites were demarcated.
In less than a year all the sites were taken and people started building temporary structures as well as brick structures. The beneficiaries of these sites came from various places, including many people from outside Sandile Village. Applicants for the sites followed a system, applications were submitted to the committee which then conducted interviews and then allocated sites to approved people. Phase two of the project is about to kick off. This time around they wish to invite the municipality and town planners to make the phase two settlement even better. The first project attracted high profile people from East London and this time around they want to control the influx of people.
The Dependency Syndrome
The current low cost housing policy has fostered a terrible dependency syndrome, a tendency where town-dwellers sit back and wait until the government comes around to give them a completed, free house. However, in practice the subsidy policy penalises beneficiaries who, while waiting for their turn to get a housing subsidy, build themselves houses on the sites allocated to them. The impression they give the government is that they can afford to build their own houses and government officials often interpret this to mean that they do not deserve to benefit from the subsidy. To avoid being penalised they are expected to do nothing but wait. This kind of action discourages people’s efforts to complement whatever assistance the government grants them. The government is seriously falling short in its “wait until you get “approach. This is but one of the reasons that we get strikes right across the country as people who are in the government’s waiting list run out of patience.
In September 2004, the government released a comprehensive housing plan, called “Breaking New Ground”, directed at the removal or improvement of all slums in South Africa as rapidly as possible, not later than 2014, and to speed up development by removing administrative blockages and to aim to reduce the time for permission to be granted for building to 50 percent of the current time (ETU – Education Training Unit,). In his State of the Nation Speech for 2010, President Zuma pointed out that 500 000 housing opportunities would be provided to the poor by 2014. What is definitely possible, beyond doubt, is that 500 000 sites can indeed be allocated. The impact of Breaking New Grounds, particularly the fast tracking of the delivery process and the removal of administrative blockages, has very poor impact on our urban areas. Things have remained the same since 2004; little has changed.
Learning From Others
Faced with an enormous influx of rural and desert people into urban areas and the resultant proliferation of squatter settlements and unplanned houses, the Saudi Arabian Government initiated a massive low-income housing programme. Two projects were key to its success. First, the Free Land Plots project provided land grants ranging from 400 to 900 square metres each. In the Riyadh suburb of Oreijah, for example, 30,000 families received free plots. The second key factor was the Real Estate Development Fund's (REDF) extension of Easy Term and Interest-Free Loans to Saudi citizens who owned land plots. In the last 20 years, the REDF gave citizens 425,000 loans with which 510,000 residential units were built at a cost of SAR 105, 646 billion (US$ 28, 168 billion). Concurrently, loans were given to Saudi investors to build housing compounds with no less than six units each. A total of 2,485 investment loans created 29,500 such units at a cost of SR.5, 170 million (Most Clearing House, Best Practices, 2010).
In our very own quarters, the previous government initiated a strategy called the Site and Service Approach, a system intended to speed up the delivery process of houses through a LANDfirst-like strategy (that did not actually provide top structures). The approach helped to provide people with sites that were located on suitable land and the municipality serviced the sites and then people went ahead to build their own houses; no subsidies were provided for the house. Site and Services is an approach intended to bring land, services and shelter within the economic reach of the poor and is practiced in other parts of the world, like India, and in particular the city of Madras. The first major scheme planned by Benninger, at Arambakkum in Chennai, created about 7 000 shelter units, within the paying capacity of the urban poor. Within five years the Madras Metropolitan Development Authority (MMDA) created more than 20 000 units and the approach became a major strategy of the World Bank to tackle a variety of shelter problems globally (Wikipedia).
In Port Elizabeth in the early 2000s, the municipality embarked on an emergency strategy to speed up housing delivery, a strategy called “ 4 Pegs” intended to release 6000 serviced plots per annum. The municipality provided the 4 PEG plot with water connections and scrapped roads. The balance of services (sewers, gravel road, etc.) were provided when the subsidy money became available. Various examples similar to the 4 Peg approach were done in other parts of the country.
A review of the People Housing Process (PHP) principles would help broaden our understanding of how approaches of getting land and building houses can work and even be modified. Through the PHP, the Department of Housing used to support communities, or organised groups of households, that want to build their own houses to provide special PHP funds to assist groups of people, and especially women, who want to build their own housing.
The People's Housing Process included the following support:
(a) Access to suitably located land that can be serviced.
(b) Access to housing subsidies and other forms of credit to build the houses.
(c) Training opportunities.
(d) Technical assistance.
The PHP helped to ensure that land is readily available and people organised themselves to form housing projects. They received training in basic building skills, carpentry, plumbing, brick-making, brick laying and electrical works and began to build their own houses. A large number of women were involved in the projects and were able to build themselves decent houses. It is time to hasten the facilitation of access to decent housing by embracing quicker and dynamic approaches.
References:
1. Xolani Mbanjwa. Cape Times 19th May 2010. Zuma loses his cool at SA's housing failure. Accessed online:retrieved19/05/2010 http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20100519045501581C585148
2. Molefe T. City Press. 14th April 2010. “We will build shacks on vacant land”. Accessed online: retrieved 12/05/2010. http://www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/We-will-build-shacks-on-vacant-land-20100414.
3. ETU (Education Training Unit) Housing subsidies and support services. Accessed online: retrieved 12/05/2010. http://www.etu.org.za/toolbox/docs/government/housing.html#4
4. Most Clearing House- Best Practices. 2010. Improving Living Environments for the Low-Income Households. Accessed online: retrieved 11/05/2010. Saudi Arabiahttp://www.unesco.org/most/mideast3.htm.
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_and_Services
It is apparent, beyond a shred of doubt, that one way or another policy review is necessary regarding the Low Cost Housing policy. An approach that encourages people to get land then build a house would help to bridge housing delivery processes and assist in clearing the current low cost housing backlogs.
The quest for houses, particularly among the urban poor, has reached boiling point right across South Africa, marked by violent protests and serious disquiet over broken promises by the government. The government for the past sixteen years has managed to provide free low cost houses to millions of urban poor South Africans and yet one startling fact remains that there are still millions of urban poor in various urban areas waiting for their turn to be issued with a key to a free low cost house. The government had failed millions of people who were living in appalling conditions in informal settlements, and President Jacob Zuma stated that efforts to explain to them why this was so after more than a decade and a half of democracy would be meaningless (Mbanjwa, 2010).
Still the government keeps on making promises as it did in the past, while each budget year the housing delivery process dramatically slows down. Recently, about 600 members of the 1996-2000 Housing Waiting Committee in Johannesburg marched to the offices of the Department of Human Settlement in Gauteng to hand over their memorandum of demands. They claim that they registered for RDP houses as far back as 1996 and that they are being sidelined. One of the marchers said, “We live in backrooms, hence nobody notices us.” In response, acting chief operations officer of the department, Bongani More, said, “In Gauteng we have all these issues all the time and we attend to all of them,” (Molefe, 2010). There are hardly any such protests among the rural poor. Rural areas are relatively quiet, which is a complete contrast to what is happening in urban places.
The government needs to device innovative strategies of cutting down the huge housing backlog. Land tenure security is definitely one such creative means that can be used to fast-track the housing delivery process. Land tenure security implies that the beneficiary is granted guaranteed occupation rights on a site and can then begin to build a house using his/her own resources or savings.
The route involved in providing a low cost house goes through tedious processes that involve technical and environmental feasibility studies and beneficiary subsidy processes, which collectively entail so much red-tape, are time consuming and ultimately terribly protracted. It is absolutely necessary that feasibility studies get done prior to occupation of land by beneficiaries, but it is equally imperative to shorten processes. Some of the activities can be conducted when beneficiaries are already settled on the land.
The process applied by rural authorities when allocating sites to their subjects demonstrates the LANDfirst approach perfectly. The process is amazingly quicker and far less time consuming in comparison with that of the urban areas. What we need to learn is that land is allocated first and the beneficiary then occupies the land and builds a shelter from his/her savings and resources without any government subsidy. People who have acquired sites start off with temporary shelters, but through an incremental process get to build beautiful permanent structures.
The Case of Sandile in Tsholomnqa Area
A beautiful eye-catching example of this type of settlement can be seen at Sandile, a rural settlement about 44km from East London. According to Vusumzi Seyisi, who is both a resident and chairperson of the Sandile Village Committee, the new settlement was planned by the community and an interim committee was set up to run the new project. They planned a sustainable community, which initially accommodated a brick-making project that would provide an opportunity for people to buy bricks locally at a cheaper price. The project also provided employment opportunities for the local people. They planned proper streets and more than 100 sites were demarcated.
In less than a year all the sites were taken and people started building temporary structures as well as brick structures. The beneficiaries of these sites came from various places, including many people from outside Sandile Village. Applicants for the sites followed a system, applications were submitted to the committee which then conducted interviews and then allocated sites to approved people. Phase two of the project is about to kick off. This time around they wish to invite the municipality and town planners to make the phase two settlement even better. The first project attracted high profile people from East London and this time around they want to control the influx of people.
The Dependency Syndrome
The current low cost housing policy has fostered a terrible dependency syndrome, a tendency where town-dwellers sit back and wait until the government comes around to give them a completed, free house. However, in practice the subsidy policy penalises beneficiaries who, while waiting for their turn to get a housing subsidy, build themselves houses on the sites allocated to them. The impression they give the government is that they can afford to build their own houses and government officials often interpret this to mean that they do not deserve to benefit from the subsidy. To avoid being penalised they are expected to do nothing but wait. This kind of action discourages people’s efforts to complement whatever assistance the government grants them. The government is seriously falling short in its “wait until you get “approach. This is but one of the reasons that we get strikes right across the country as people who are in the government’s waiting list run out of patience.
In September 2004, the government released a comprehensive housing plan, called “Breaking New Ground”, directed at the removal or improvement of all slums in South Africa as rapidly as possible, not later than 2014, and to speed up development by removing administrative blockages and to aim to reduce the time for permission to be granted for building to 50 percent of the current time (ETU – Education Training Unit,). In his State of the Nation Speech for 2010, President Zuma pointed out that 500 000 housing opportunities would be provided to the poor by 2014. What is definitely possible, beyond doubt, is that 500 000 sites can indeed be allocated. The impact of Breaking New Grounds, particularly the fast tracking of the delivery process and the removal of administrative blockages, has very poor impact on our urban areas. Things have remained the same since 2004; little has changed.
Learning From Others
Faced with an enormous influx of rural and desert people into urban areas and the resultant proliferation of squatter settlements and unplanned houses, the Saudi Arabian Government initiated a massive low-income housing programme. Two projects were key to its success. First, the Free Land Plots project provided land grants ranging from 400 to 900 square metres each. In the Riyadh suburb of Oreijah, for example, 30,000 families received free plots. The second key factor was the Real Estate Development Fund's (REDF) extension of Easy Term and Interest-Free Loans to Saudi citizens who owned land plots. In the last 20 years, the REDF gave citizens 425,000 loans with which 510,000 residential units were built at a cost of SAR 105, 646 billion (US$ 28, 168 billion). Concurrently, loans were given to Saudi investors to build housing compounds with no less than six units each. A total of 2,485 investment loans created 29,500 such units at a cost of SR.5, 170 million (Most Clearing House, Best Practices, 2010).
In our very own quarters, the previous government initiated a strategy called the Site and Service Approach, a system intended to speed up the delivery process of houses through a LANDfirst-like strategy (that did not actually provide top structures). The approach helped to provide people with sites that were located on suitable land and the municipality serviced the sites and then people went ahead to build their own houses; no subsidies were provided for the house. Site and Services is an approach intended to bring land, services and shelter within the economic reach of the poor and is practiced in other parts of the world, like India, and in particular the city of Madras. The first major scheme planned by Benninger, at Arambakkum in Chennai, created about 7 000 shelter units, within the paying capacity of the urban poor. Within five years the Madras Metropolitan Development Authority (MMDA) created more than 20 000 units and the approach became a major strategy of the World Bank to tackle a variety of shelter problems globally (Wikipedia).
In Port Elizabeth in the early 2000s, the municipality embarked on an emergency strategy to speed up housing delivery, a strategy called “ 4 Pegs” intended to release 6000 serviced plots per annum. The municipality provided the 4 PEG plot with water connections and scrapped roads. The balance of services (sewers, gravel road, etc.) were provided when the subsidy money became available. Various examples similar to the 4 Peg approach were done in other parts of the country.
A review of the People Housing Process (PHP) principles would help broaden our understanding of how approaches of getting land and building houses can work and even be modified. Through the PHP, the Department of Housing used to support communities, or organised groups of households, that want to build their own houses to provide special PHP funds to assist groups of people, and especially women, who want to build their own housing.
The People's Housing Process included the following support:
(a) Access to suitably located land that can be serviced.
(b) Access to housing subsidies and other forms of credit to build the houses.
(c) Training opportunities.
(d) Technical assistance.
The PHP helped to ensure that land is readily available and people organised themselves to form housing projects. They received training in basic building skills, carpentry, plumbing, brick-making, brick laying and electrical works and began to build their own houses. A large number of women were involved in the projects and were able to build themselves decent houses. It is time to hasten the facilitation of access to decent housing by embracing quicker and dynamic approaches.
References:
1. Xolani Mbanjwa. Cape Times 19th May 2010. Zuma loses his cool at SA's housing failure. Accessed online:retrieved19/05/2010 http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20100519045501581C585148
2. Molefe T. City Press. 14th April 2010. “We will build shacks on vacant land”. Accessed online: retrieved 12/05/2010. http://www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/We-will-build-shacks-on-vacant-land-20100414.
3. ETU (Education Training Unit) Housing subsidies and support services. Accessed online: retrieved 12/05/2010. http://www.etu.org.za/toolbox/docs/government/housing.html#4
4. Most Clearing House- Best Practices. 2010. Improving Living Environments for the Low-Income Households. Accessed online: retrieved 11/05/2010. Saudi Arabiahttp://www.unesco.org/most/mideast3.htm.
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_and_Services