Rethinking the informal housing sector

Like South Africa’s other major cities, eThekwini faces a series of challenges in not only addressing housing shortages but in ensuring the delivery of services to the marginalised and sprawling informal settlements that dot its landscape.

There has been an acceptance that conventional approaches to upgrading – premised on Breaking New Ground-type housing delivery and formalisation – are inadequate in addressing the informal settlements challenge in South Africa.

It is further accepted that, given the scale of settlements and services backlogs, it is impossible to comprehensively upgrade all informal settlements in the short to medium term and that an incremental approach focused mainly on essential services provision and secure tenure should the main response. The objective is to reach as many households as possible instead of having a waiting-list-oriented approach where many settlements may wait a long time before being assisted.

The new approach to upgrading needs to be inclusive of all informal settlements, incremental, participative and partnership-oriented. This is consistent with both national policy as well as international practice.

The new approach to upgrading needs to foster a different and more functional relationship between the state and the urban poor, which is not premised solely on state service delivery, but which also leverages the partnerships necessary for more effective social capital formation, collaboration and ‘self-help’. State investments (e.g. in basic services) need to ‘leverage’ this kind of shift.

Reprioritising criteria

In order to establish a more effective informal settlement upgrading pipeline (including incremental services) – which meet Urban Settlement Development Grant (USDG), NUSP and the Municipality’s own objectives – refined prioritisation criteria are required. These are outlined below:

• Vulnerability: extent of health and safety threats, using net density as one of the means to apply this criterion.

• Services deficit: the various components of incremental services that are absent or lacking due to inefficient ratios/thresholds of household numbers relative to service points.

• Population coverage: the larger the settlement in terms of the number of households, the greater the efficiency of delivery and return on investment.

• Age of settlement: how long have people been waiting for services.

• Community readiness: how stable the community and leadership are and their appetite to embrace the new, incremental approach. While not confined to the South African Shack Dwellers (SDI) settlements, for which the organisation has entered into an MoU with the City, but serves as one example to consider.

• Location: in terms of various strategic plans and policy prescripts such as the Built Environment Performance Plan (BEPP), the Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF), Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA), the Spatial Development Framework (SDF) and others, the need to address spatial inequality and inefficiencies is a high priority from national right down to local government. Taking direction from the BEPP’s integration zones, which is a concept to spatially deal with objectives of city-building – especially inclusiveness, efficiency and connectivity – the prime investment corridor and the urban zone have been identified as areas to focus on without necessarily neglecting the needs to informal settlements in the remaining zones.

Broadening services

There also needs to be a focus on more than just basic services, functional tenure and incremental housing improvements. Key social services (e.g. early childhood development, schools, clinics, etc.) are also important, alongside more effective access to public transport and economic opportunities. Upgrading needs to be seen as a sustained process of urban change over time rather than a onceoff, project-type intervention. It needs to be programmatic and area-based in orientation rather than just focused on delivering single/separate ‘projects’. In general, the state needs to focus its efforts and finite resources mainly on enabling public realm investments (rather than the provision of free housing).

In support of the broader collaborative informal settlement action approach, the new approach to informal settlement upgrading also needs to include a focus on ensuring that informal settlements (and their associated upgrading) are sustainable and climate smart. This could, for example, include exploring circular

• incremental – improvements over time

• in situ – relocations a last resort

• partnership based – municipality, communities, NGOs, CBOs, universities, private sector, etc.

• participative – communities as co-drivers

• programmatic and area-based – as opposed to project-delivery focused

• differentiated – addresses a range of key local priorities, not one-size fits all

• flexible – statutory and regulatory, working with and not against informality

• sustainable

• climate smart.

Housing delivery challenges

The reality is that the ideal situation would be to house every single person and family in decent, formal housing; however, this is simply not possible, as housing delivery presents significant challenges.

The funding portion for top structures is insufficient for- medium and high-density developments such as double-storey row-houses, especially if they are located on steep sites. Medium- to high-density developments are required to implement the spatial and housing strategies of eThekwini. Top-ups per unit are required to beneficiaries on their responsibilities in living within sectional title developments. This also begs the question of whether such beneficiaries would be in a position to afford the levies.

The housing subsidy provisions for difficult geotechnical conditions are insufficient for building on steep and geotechnically difficult land. The geotechnical variation allowed for in the subsidy scheme does not adequately respond to eThekwini’s soil and slope conditions. A top-up subsidy is required to enable additional earthworks, embankments, soil retaining, slope stabilisation, and stormwater control in such areas.

Other key challenges relating to housing include: high backlogs with limited available funding; a lack of well-located and suitable land; projects being stalled due to delays experienced in land acquisition, environmental and developmental approvals and conflicting interests, especially with adjoining communities; the invasion of land and houses; and the unavailability of bulk infrastructure (sewer, water, electricity and roads) and/or ageing infrastructure.