GOOD speech by Brett Herron,
GOOD: Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
10 May 2022
Note to editor: this is the speech that was delivered by GOOD Secretary-General and Member of Parliament, Brett Herron, during today’s Parliamentary Budget Vote on Human Settlements.
Speaker,
We support the budget vote but call on the Minister of Human Settlements to reimagine the country’s public housing programme so that by this time next year we can debate more hopeful and sustainable solutions to progressively resolve the national housing crisis.
We note the commitment, in the annual performance plan (APP) executive summary, to a new human settlements code, but note too the absence of any indicators to hold the commitment to account.
We can celebrate the fact that South Africa has rolled out one of the largest public housing programmes in the world but we must learn from our experience that a free house is not necessarily an affordable house.
We have dismally failed to break down the Group Areas Act and effect spatial justice.
Instead, we have built suburbs of poverty on the outskirts of our towns and cities, entrenching the apartheid model instead of re-sculpting it.
We have created a 40 x 40 x 40 crisis: 40 square meter houses, built 40 kilometres away from jobs and services, costing residents 40% of their income in transport costs.
At the same time, we dismally under-calculated the impacts of urbanisation, immigration and loss of jobs and therefore security of tenure of farmworker families.
The outskirts of our towns and cities now virtually uniformly comprise new townships for the “fortunate” and sprawling shack lands.
With nearly three decades of experience, we have to admit that in its current form our housing code does not meet our Section 26 constitutional obligations to provide access to adequate housing.
It is not sustainable.
We do not have a sustainable housing programme.
We are not creating sustainable communities.
We are not creating sustainable towns and cities.
Where people live matters.
If we plough ahead on the road we’re on we lock in socio-economic catastrophe from which it will take decades to recover.
The current housing code is a blunt instrument that assumes we have economic equality across the country and a uniform property market.
We have to address affordability within local contexts. Cities and towns have different economies, different income levels and different property markets.
Using a blunt qualifying instrument, and a standard income threshold, relegates low earners in cities with bigger economies, higher levels of income and unaffordable property markets, to a life of exclusion from their section 26 rights.
Their household income may be higher than a family in a smaller town but relative to the local context they may actually be poorer in real terms.
It’s time we looked at the true extent of inadequate and/or unaffordable housing which is much larger than our current model assumes.
The new housing code must address the true meaning of affordability in the local context – including the future of informal settlements.
We must provide real security of tenure with a right to build and introduce a meaningful informal settlements upgrade programme.
Given our private housing markets, we must expand the role of the private sector by codifying inclusionary housing in return for additional development rights. This can be done through an amendment of SPLUMA.
Access to housing is in crisis that same-ole, same-old approaches just aren’t going to fix.
We need the courage to discard that which isn’t working and reimagine a new landscape of equity and justice.
Media enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD: Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 0825183264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Samkelo Mgobozi, GOOD: Media Manager
Cell: 0792315977 (WhatsApp)/0829684021 (calls)
Email: samm@forgood.org.za