The government is looking at innovative ways to speed up the delivery of public housing amid significant growth in informal settlements.
On Tuesday, the City of Tshwane, supported by the government at both provincial and national levels, convened a symposium attended by top developers and investors, aimed at coming up with sustainable solutions for the country’s housing needs.
The host municipality itself has no fewer than five hundred informal settlements that are sprawling out of control.
Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelani said urban municipalities continue to experience an influx of people from so-called rural provinces and elsewhere on the African continent.
“We know that as cities you bear the brunt of this rapid urbanisation that we are talking about, because people move to where they think there are opportunities. So as we come up with solutions, we must be mindful that informal settlements are growing,” said Simelani.
“This symposium should not only be about talk shop. It must bring money and resources. It must also outline clear business plans that come from government and government reforms that are very intentional in resolving the red tape, but also in shortening how we are going to deal with all these plans.
“We believe that having this conversation today will take human settlements to another level,” said Tshwane Human Settlements MMC Aaron Maluleka.
Maluleka said the city has been spending billions of rands each year to provide essential services to residents of informal settlements, a spending pattern he believes cannot be sustained.
“What we’ve realised is that we are spending money in areas that are not taking us forward. We provide rudimentary service interventions; we spend billions of rands managing informal settlements, not resolving them. We believe that from today onwards we must resolve informal settlements (and we will resolve them through rental, affordable rental, land development, which includes serviced stands for people who are poor so they can build for themselves in future) and ensure better coordination of our activities,” he said.
Developers raised concerns about red tape, which they said prolonged processes, with the government immediately committing to making some regulatory reforms.