By Max Matavire Metro Editor
ABOUT 5 000 high-density homes are to be built for Nelson Mandela Bay in the first three financial years of a five-year municipal programme.
The municipality calls this a revolutionary housing development strategy which will bring the poor closer to community facilities and their places of work.
About R448-million will be spent during this period in the implementation of the concept, known as social housing or rental accommodation. One of its main objectives is to integrate the long-separated communities of Mandela Bay.
The housing and land committee approved its social housing policy this week, and the Bay has been chosen by the national government to pilot such a housing scheme. A three-member task team of councillors from the committee has been established to drive the process.
“The municipality will not build these houses, but its role will be that of co-ordination and facilitation. The houses will be built by private developers and housing development companies.
“The aim is to provide affordable accommodation which is also closer to places of work and community facilities, and to make a dent in our huge housing backlog,” said task team member and DA councillor Andrew Gibbon, former director of housing in the Port Elizabeth municipality.
He said the project envisaged high-density accommodation, but not high-rise. Sites have already been identified at the bottom of Valley Road, Central, and in Walmer adjacent to Buffelsfontein Road. Gibbon said parts of Uitenhage and other areas where the council owns vacant land were also being looked at.
According to the plans, about 800 units will be built in the financial year 2007/08 at a cost of R73-million. In the following financial year (2008/09), about 900 units will be built at a cost of R83-million. One thousand units will be built in 2009/10 at a cost of R91-million, and in 2010/11, 1 100 units will be built at a cost of R101-million. In the final year, 2011/12, 1 200 units will be built, costing about R110-million.
The current national policy stipulates that people earning between R1 500 and R7 500 should be the beneficiaries, but the housing committee this week agreed to one of the many recommendations by Gibbon that the minimum qualifying income limit should be increased to R5 000 and the upper limit to R10 000.
“The motivation of increasing the qualifying income limit to R5 000 is that households earning less than this amount are unlikely to be able to afford an economic rent.
“At the other end of the scale, households earning less than R10 000 cannot afford full market-related rentals in more desirable suburbs,” Gibbon told the committee yesterday.
He said the council would have to ask the national government to agree to this.
Gibbon said the implementation of the project should be easy as the infrastructure already exists. A lot of money was spent on transport to and from work. This concept would bring people closer to their work, allowing them to walk.
Developers will get a government subsidy and must also bring in their own capital. The accommodation will be rented for 15 years, after which it will belong to the developers. The municipality will have to plan for those who, after 15 years, will not have accommodation.
Gibbon called the scheme a “totally new” concept of providing housing.
The draft Social Housing Bill was published last November and the Act should be promulgated in September. “We cannot go ahead with the project, although we have a budget for it, because we have to wait for the Bill to become law.”
The municipality is looking at “something much bigger” than the 40m² metro house. “There is a desperate need for rented accommodation. I am very keen about this project, and I want it to work,” Gibbon said.
Committee chairman Melvin Manentsa said: “We adopt the policy together with the added recommendations, and then raise the matter with provincial and national forums.”
matavirem@johncom.co.za