Old Mutual Properties (OMP) have not exactly endeared themselves to the inner city over the past few years. A number of their properties have been allowed to become major liabilities in the urban fabric. The old CNA building on the corner of Commissioner and Rissik, the adjacent Shakespeare House and of course the historic Barbican building have all become examples of demolition by neglect. In fairness, the public sector has also hardly covered themselves in glory when one looks at the Rissik Street Post Office, the Irish Barracks and numerous other public sector owned buildings.

But, in so far as OMP is concerned, that all appears to be changing with the welcome news of a partnership that has been forged to enter the inner city residential market that will see, initially, at least four of the OMP inner city buildings being refurbished. The partnership, aptly named "Vuselela (Rejuvenate) Investments" - – brings together OMP and the Wapnick’s City Properties in a 50/50 join venture. City Properties is a well established major developer in Pretoria. Owning between 5000 and 6000 residential units as well as a growing retail stock, they also entered the Johannesburg retail market some time ago with properties in Killarney and Woodmead. Now they bring their extensive residential expertise and experience to the Johannesburg Inner City in partnership with OMP. OMP of course are also no slouches when it comes to inner city residential refurbishment. They blazed the way in the Cape Town CBD with the refurbishment of the historic OM Building into up-market apartments.

On Wednesday I had the privilege of being asked to join the OMP team and Alec and Geoffrey Wapnick at a celebratory lunch launching the start of the refurbishment of the first of their joint projects, 150 Jeppe Street, the New Plaza building. Over lunch, Geoff spoke to me about the philosophy that they have developed and honed in Pretoria. They believe, and have proved, that quality accommodation, extremely well managed, creates an environment that positively influences tenant behaviour and through which the residents become a community rather than a disparate group all doing their own thing. In fact, all of their Pretoria residential investments are branded as "Places" because this best defines their philosophy of the locus of the development of community amongst tenants. So ‘New Plaza’ will re-emerge in about eleven to twelve months time as ‘Plaza Place’ – 211 units - bachelor, 1 and 2 bedrooms - and with retail on the ground floor.

A further three residential refurbishment projects will follow Plaza Place. A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon in Pretoria with Alec looking at a number of their developments and was struck by the quality and effective management of their developments. So a warm welcome to Vuselela, may it grow from strength to strength and become as important a player in Jozi as City Props is in Tshwane.

Chatting to the OMP team it also became clear that they too have a fresh and positive approach to the inner city. Recognising the positive trends that have emerged over the past two years they are dusting off previous plans and re-examing them in light of the changes that have taken place.

Even the Barbican and the vacant site that it forms part of is being re-examined. Always a major force in the South African property scene it will be great to see OMP actively back in the city.

As so often happens, positive announcements such as these are often almost negated by other events. Wednesday’s Star carried a story which headlined "Hijackers take over city building". The story was somewhat confused by the usual allegations and denials but in essence related to the illegal occupation of an industrial building recently vacated by the previous legal tenants. The leader of the occupiers claimed their invasion had been ‘authorized’ by City Power due to large service arrears. Apart from the City Power involvement, which was denied by that organisation, what is particularly of concern is that notwithstanding the fact that the front gate was broken to obtain entry, the police refused to help and instructed the agent for the owner to apply for an eviction order (which would cost some R60 000-00). An attorney who handles evictions is quoted as saying that the police never take action in invasion cases. He is quoted as saying "It is a politically sensitive matter and they always insist that civil action be taken even though breaking-and-entering and trespassing are clearly criminal offences. "

In the early 1990s this kind of illegal invasion was quite widespread and I know of sporadic cases that have subsequently taken place. But back then it was at a sensitive period of transition and we have been steadily working our way out of such difficulties. The police’s abrogation of responsibility reflects the fact that, as a country we are indeed soft on crime and this can be of no comfort to would be investors in the inner city. But it also reflects a larger malaise that I have been harping on for some time and that is that we don’t have a plan when it comes to accommodating the urban poor. I had hoped that I would gain some wonderful wisdom in this regard at the World Urban Forum (WUF) in Barcelona but I must admit to hearing all the usual rhetoric with very little in the way of practical solutions. WUF’s bark is clearly worse than its bite!

(Sorry!)

The current ‘five pillar’ inner city strategy is a good one – remove sinkholes; create ripple ponds; support economic sectors; upgrade and maintain infrastructure and improve urban management. All of this supports the main objective; "Raise and sustain private investment leading to a steady rise in property prices". I have always however felt that the five pillars fail to specifically address the broader social issues that will continue to plague the main objective unless we develop strong strategies to deal with them. And strong strategies require enforcement and not pussy-footing with the whining excuses of ‘political sensitivity’. Some may argue that the strategies relate only to economic recovery - I don’t believe that we will achieve economic recovery without dealing with the social problems.

There can be no doubt that regeneration and housing the urban poor in an affordable manner is a huge problem and one that is not confined to ourselves. It is also fact that our situation will undoubtedly get worse as dilapidated and crime ridden areas such as Bertrams and New Doornfontein are dealt with in light of the needs of 2010. Put more bluntly, the city, no the country, cannot allow the situation that exists in these areas to exist and, particularly, right in the heart of the 2010 sports arena environment. Gentrification is an inescapable fact, the desperately needed upgrading of these areas is going to mean that people who are currently living there will probably not be able to do so when the work is complete. So where do they go?

We did try to address these issues through the Cities in Change conference but I fear we’ve ended with more questions than answers. One of our speakers, Steve Topham, who at the conference graphically highlighted the plight that the urban poor find themselves in, has subsequently come up with some interesting suggestions such as

• Possibly using the Better Buildings Programme mechanism to make more buildings available for transitional/affordable low-income rental. He asks if it is not possible to incentivise developers, by offering something like an option to 'buy two buildings and get one free' on the condition that the 'free' building is used for low-income rental.

• Convincing the inner city property owners and managers to make some sortof collective effort in respect of this kind of housing in order to spread the risk among themselves.

• Examining 'social gain' policy and programme mechanisms that could help such as the ‘Dublin experience’ in getting developers to provide/upgrade social housing when they provide middle to upper housing.

I’m sure there are other worthwhile examples/suggestions that we should be looking at but who is "we" – who should be taking the lead in this issue?

I can only re-iterate the statement of a city practitioner of considerable wisdom – "If cities do not learn to deal constructively with the urban poor, the urban poor will deal destructively with cities."

Neil Fraser