Question NW4065 to the Minister of Human Settlements

Reply:

(a) There are two programmes that focus on the provision of social and rental housing, namely the Social Housing Programme and Community Residential Units Programme. These have gained a measure of improved momentum since 2010 with projects being implemented in seven provinces. Planning is currently underway in the remaining two provinces for CRU. In addition, all the municipalities have approved restructuring zones for social housing developments. The Provinces and various Municipalities have projects in various stages of implementation as part of a project pipeline that extends up to 2019.

Honourable member, we have already acknowledged that we are not doing well in this area hence the current review of the social housing policy with a view to accelerating delivery in social housing.  Once the policy proposals have been agreed to by MinMEC, I will elaborate on changes we are making in respect of this matter.

 

The table below indicates the number of social and CRU units delivered since 2010:

PROVINCE	DELIVERY
	1 April 2010 to 31 March 2014	1 April 2014 to 30 September 2015
	Social	Cru	Social	Cru
EC	3 065	0	368	0
FS	3 867	1 094	315	451
GT	11 630	5 278	611	495
KZN	9 103	966	567	239
LP	197	197	0	0
MP	925	794	246	273
NC	352	332	0	0
NW	2 868	468	0	0
WC	10 964	6 096	864	1068
TOTAL	42 971	15 225	2 971	2526

 

(b) The Community Residential Units Programme is a public rental programme, which is funded by government through a subsidy, and as such private stakeholder participation is not mandatory, but is undertaken with relevant communities and stakeholders. The Department in conjunction with the Provinces and Municipalities has however facilitated number collaborative ventures, on various programmes including the Social and Rental Housing Programmes.

In the Social and Rental sector a project in the Free State is in the process of being planned, funded and implemented. It resulted in a locally based mining company (Harmony Gold Mines) donating land and buildings to the local municipality to redevelop. This will result in four hundred and sixty four (464) community residential units being developed as part of the regeneration of the buildings. A second collaborative venture was a fifty hectare land donation by Lonmin Mines in the North West Province for the development of an integrated housing project for the Marikana Community. To date, two hundred and fifty two (252) CRU units are at various stages of completion.

The Social Housing programme is designed to be a private sector driven in a joint venture with government. All social housing projects are implemented privately and/or community led Social Housing Institutions with government contributing towards the cost of the delivery of the unit via a subsidy. The private developers and private investors are encouraged and in fact participate in the programme.

(c) The location of the rental housing project is important hence the social housing projects can only be implemented in areas that have been declared restructuring zones in order to contribute to the achievement of spatial, economic and social restructuring. The restructuring area is an area that provides improved access to socio-economic amenities and transport nodes. Whilst it is not the norm, most of the rental projects form part of a mixed development of different types of human settlement typologies, in a mixed development project can comprise of social housing accommodation, subsidised housing, finance linked bonded houses, retail and commercial development.

In addition, a percentage of projects which will form part of the Catalytic Projects Programme will compromise of social and rental housing and it is pleasing to note a number of the projects will be initiated by private sector developers. At an appropriate time a more informative and comprehensive announcement will be made on the matter.