DEBATE SPEECH BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT AND SECRETARY GENERAL
Land occupations must be understood in the context of urbanization
We must focus on solutions
17 September 2020
We cannot stop urbanisation. We have to focus on supply
What we are dealing with is a failure of supply of housing opportunities in the face of overwhelming demand. We will not solve this by focussing on policing and security.
It is a fundamental and inarguable fact that a human being must live somewhere.
Being human means you must be somewhere at all times – that is not a choice. At the end of the day you must go somewhere to eat, sleep and be home.
We continuously talk about rapid urbanisation. It’s a phenomenon in every developing world city. But then act surprised and outraged when land is occupied in an unplanned way.
When human beings have nowhere else to be, and occupy land, we are confronted by the reality that we have not planned a home for them. And we have created an environment ripe for exploitation.
And when they occupy land that was meant for someone else – that disadvantages another homeless person unfairly. But it is our failure to provide an alternative too that we are confronted by.
Those who exploit the homeless, the poor and the desperate by so-called shack-farming – or selling access to a dwelling or a piece of land they have no right to sell – must be prosecuted for the fraud they are committing.
But we must find solutions to neutralise the exploitation and to allow people to live somewhere we recognise as legitimate.
The solutions do not exist if we do not acknowledge that our supply of housing is dwarfed by the demand and that everybody must live somewhere.
Our supply is constrained because we act trapped by the national housing programme and by the national grant funding.
We can find our own solutions. The pressure chamber of access to affordable housing exists across the entire income spectrum.
We will only release this pressure in a manageable way if we increase supply of housing by both the private sector and the public sector.
We must increase the supply of housing across the full spectrum of income bands.
The private sector need faster development approvals and enhanced rights in the right places. In return for enhanced rights they must contribute affordable housing units – this is the very essence of inclusionary housing.
The public sector, this government and our municipalities, must leverage public land to increase the supply of housing opportunities.
We cannot stop urbanisation. We have to focus on supply. And we must be prepared to make radical changes to our own plans.
ENDS…