Human Settlements
Whether his Department and municipalities in the province plan to regard backyard dwellers as prioritised beneficiaries; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
(a)My department’s approach is to ensure that backyard dwellers are provided an appropriate number of housing opportunities within each municipality. This is to be achieved by encouraging municipalities to strike a fair balance between informal settlement dwellers and people living in backyards across housing projects. Each municipality decides on the number and size of greenfield and Upgrade of Informal Settlement Projects (UISP) in a year (or rather over a 5-year period). This decision should be informed by the “profile” of need in a municipality i.e. number of informal settlement dwellers without individual services versus the number of backyarders without individual services.
Soon after assuming my duties as the provincial Minister for Human Settlements, I issued an executive directive to all municipalities in the province compelling them to ensure that a 50/50 principle guides the selection outcome for housing allocation to beneficiaries. This is to ensure that there is a balance in subsidy housing projects allocation in a municipality between households living in informal settlements and those living in backyards and overcrowded formal areas. The Department’s “Provincial Framework Policy for the Selection of Housing Beneficiaries” provides for this balancing in each municipality.
This directive means the following:
- Beneficiaries for greenfields projects without a de-densification component linked to UISP projects are to be selected solely based on the municipality’s beneficiary selection policy.
- In all projects occurring on greenfields sites which have a de-densification component, the number of households from the UISP project accommodated on the site needs to be matched by the number of households selected from the municipality’s housing demand database on a 50/50 basis. This means that each greenfields site (and the related project) with a UISP de-densification component also needs to accommodate a component drawn from the housing demand database.
With immediate effect the 50/50 rule for greenfield project sites which have a de-densification component linked to a UISP project is to be implemented where this is practical.
- To further assist our backyarders, we will be embarking on a weekend Housing Waiting List Verification Drive, during October and November, to give residents an opportunity to confirm or update their details on the list. We will also be providing residents the opportunity to register, if they have not done so before. Having already been to 18 of the 30 Municipalities, I have found that there are a number of backyarders who are not registered and we hope they will use this opportunity when we are in their areas.
