Core housing and subsidies in South Africa : addressing the unintended outcomes

Abstract

Paper presented at the XXXIII IAHS World Congress on Housing, 27-30 September 2005,"Transforming Housing Environments through Design", University of Pretoria.

Over the last decade the South African government housing programme has produced large numbers of small, core houses which have changed the country’s landscape. This paper compares the original intentions of the housing policy (as framed in the 1994 White Paper and the Urban Development Framework), with the physical outcomes that have materialised through the production of around 1.6 million houses by 2004. Drawing on research data collected from more established core housing areas built in the 1980s [1], and comparing these to more recent delivery patterns, the paper will discuss the mismatch between intention and outcome. It will seek to answer why originally well intentioned policy and financing instruments led to a series of unintended consequences, where a participative housing format became rather a mass roll out of infrastructure with little engagement of the interests of residents. It develops an interpretation of core housing as a delivery system which is constrained in its ability to open up space for participation and choice for residents. The paper uses theoretical and empirical information generated as part of a PhD thesis and then discusses this in light of recent policy developments in South Africa (the recent adoption of the new “Comprehensive Plan” developed by the national Department of Housing).