The City of Joburg is targeting about 82 buildings in the CBD for ‘expropriation’ to conversion into low cost housing units.
The metro started expropriating vacant land and building in 2017 and had already converted seized structures into homes to accommodate millions within the so-called gap market – people earning too little to afford a mortgage and too much to qualify for an RDP house.
This week Skosana Court, in Jeppestown was the site of a launch and visit by the MMC for Housing Mlungisi Mabaso who said the Department of Human Settlements will continue identifying bad buildings, acquire them and convert them into decent accommodation.
Skosana Court is named after one of the Jeppestown residents the late Phumlani Skosana, an activist who waged a struggle against building hijackings in the City. His family were at the event in his honour.
Talking about plans to convert more buildings into homes and plans to build RDP houses in the inner city, Mabaso said: “As part of the inner city rejuvenation, we convert bad buildings and turn them into decent accommodation and also provide homes for those in the gap market who do not qualify for subsidised houses in the form of a RDP (homes) and also do not qualify for home loans.
“There is a council resolution on their expropriation and we have quite a number of buildings that the Group Forensic and Investigation Service Department (GFIS) is working on. Once they have concluded their processes, the report will be sent to the council and then the council will give approval for the expropriation of those buildings”.
Mabaso said some buildings are bought through GFIS.
“If the building is owing a lot of money then the council expropriates the building then it would be handed over to the department for development.
“The planning process has started but now the challenge that we have there,, we are still conducting before we conclude the planning processes.”
Johannesburg and the rest of Gauteng record the most numbers of people migrating from far-flung provinces in search of a better life resulting in, among others, overcrowding and homelessness.
