News & events

Events

Provision of Affordable Social Housing to address the right to shelter: A case study and model of Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg South African Metropolitan cities

04 July 2017
12:30 - 14:00

Invitation

Speakers: Dr Jaya Josie, Nozibele Gcora and Krish Chetty (HSRC)

Date: 04 July 2017      Time:  12h30 – 14h00 
Venues:   Pretoria, Durban, Cape Town

Post-apartheid democracy housing provision in South Africa is dominated by the legacy of apartheid spatial and socio-economic inequality, social exclusion and slums characterized by environmentally unsustainable living conditions. Despite government’s efforts housing provision is caught between having to provide subsidized housing for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, and those wishing to access the housing market but cannot, because they don’t earn enough to access mortgage housing finance.  The latter live mostly in rented accommodation on the edges of home ownership and housing provision. Households from this segment, known as the ‘gap market’, are marginalized living in slums with little or no access to shelter, water and sanitation, transport and waste removal. Government policy for the gap market thus far has resulted in a backlog in the supply of affordable sustainable housing in general and social housing in particular. Our paper provides an affordable housing financing model for sustainable public housing policy in South Africa and other BRICS countries with lessons for improving social housing policy in the context of the UN proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The study proposes a financing model for the progressive public financing of the right to housing and shelter in South Africa. The model targets the funding of affordable social housing backlogs to bring the level of such housing stock up to a predetermined policy standard. The purpose of the model is to give policymakers an instrument to finance the backlog and, the demand for affordable housing from the housing gap market made up of households caught between inaccessibility to mortgages because they don’t earn enough, and inaccessibility to subsidized housing because they earn too much. In this phase of the study we apply the model and run simulations in a case study using data from three of the largest Metropolitan Municipalities in South Africa. The municipalities or Metros include Cape Town, Johannesburg, and eThekwini (Durban).

YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlZmOKUMlnE

Kindly RSVP by 03 July 2017

The HSRC seminar series is funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The views and opinions expressed therein  as well as findings and statements of the seminar series do not necessarily represent the views of DST.

Pretoria : HSRC Video Conference, 1st floor HSRC Library Human Sciences Research Council, 134 Pretorius Street, Pretoria. Arlene Grossberg, Tel: (012) 302 2811, e-mail: acgrossberg@hsrc.ac.za

Cape Town : HSRC, Merchant House 116-118 Buitengracht Street Cape Town, Cape Town. Contact: Jean Witten, Tel (021) 4668004, Fax (021) 461 0299, or JWitten@hsrc.ac.za

Durban : 
The Atrium, 5th Floor, 430 Peter Mokaba Ridge, Berea, 4001 , Contact Ridhwaan Khan, Tel (031) 242 5400, cell: 083 788 2786 or RKhan@hsrc.ac.za , or Hlengiwe Zulu at e-mail HZulu@hsrc.ac.za