A recent judgment has put the problem of inner city housing for the poorest of the poor squarely in the spotlight. Perhaps the time has come for an inner city housing indaba for the public and private sector to come up with some workable solutions.

March 13, 2006
By Neil Fraser

I ENDED last week's Citichat with a comment that a high court ruling on City council evictions and related issues was made on the previous Friday, 3 March.

I also proposed that a housing indaba should be held between local government authorities and the private sector to discuss the Breaking New Ground document as it affects the City and private sector developers. I suggested that, whatever the outcome of the court case, we needed to create space for debate and solutions on this issue as well.

Incidentally I had a good deal of support for such an indaba. Well, the ruling was duly handed down and, for me, it contained at least one surprise.

The high court judgment makes interesting reading - if you want a copy, drop me an email. It centres on an application brought by the City council to evict more than 300 people from six properties in the inner city based on the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act 103 of 1977, "which concerns the City's ability to exercise its statutory powers and duties to prevent dangerous living conditions in its area of jurisdiction".

Judge J Jajbhay introduced his judgment as follows: "The consequences of rendering a person homeless in the circumstances postulated in this case have a very wide reach. It affects the very quality of a person's life, dignity and a person's freedom and security."

He went on to quote from the United Nations Housing Rights Programme: "To live in a place, and to have established one's own personal habitat with peace, security and dignity, should be considered neither a luxury, a privilege nor purely the good fortune of those who can afford a decent home. Rather, the requisite imperative of housing for personal security, privacy, health, safety, protection from the elements and many other attributes of a shared humanity, has led the international community to recognise adequate housing as a basic and fundamental human right."

Homeless
The judge recognised that, while many states had adopted and ratified these human rights, "their implementation appears to present difficulties for homeless people". He stressed that a state had a duty "immediately to address the housing needs of its respective population, if any significant number of individuals are deprived of basic shelter and housing. To do otherwise is considered a prima facie violation of the right to adequate housing."
In commenting in regard to some of the buildings affected in the hearing, two in Berea and one in Main Street, all visited by the judge, he stated that: "The properties are in an abysmal condition. Many occupiers on each property are illegal occupiers as contemplated in section one of PIE [the Prevention of Illegal Evictions legislation which is primarily related to land invasions but spills over into housing accommodation].

"Many of the occupiers on each property have been in occupation for a substantial period of time, some for as long as 10 years. The occupiers of the properties are desperately poor people. Most of the occupiers have no formal employment; in fact many of them have no income whatsoever."

These words describe many properties in the inner city and not just these three. In fact, the judge clearly realised this as he later stated that, "The Applicant's Inner City Regeneration Strategy will affect thousands of poor occupiers in the inner city in this way."

He conceded however that, "Where occupiers have been occupying the building for some time (such as in the present instance) has to be looked at with far greater sympathy than those who deliberately invade the buildings with a view to disrupting a housing regeneration programme contemplated by a municipality."

There is an interesting quote from another ruling: "What is really a welfare problem gets converted into a property one."

The judge then referred to the Emergency Housing Programme which was established as a direct response to a previous ruling, requiring municipalities to assess the emergency housing needs in their areas and to apply for provincial funding if necessary - in other words to establish their own programme to assess the needs in their area and take action to address them. The judge found that we don't have such a programme - an issue that has concerned me and which I have voiced on numerous occasions.

Ubuntu
What I found extremely interesting in the judgment was the following statement related to ubuntu. "In South Africa, the culture of ubuntu is the capacity to express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building, maintaining and strengthening the community. Ubuntu speaks to our inter-connectedness, our common humanity and the responsibility to each that flows from our connection.
"This, in turn, must be interpreted to mean that in the establishment of our constitutional values we must not allow urbanisation and the accumulation of wealth and material possessions to rob us of our warmth, hospitality and genuine interests in each other as human beings. Ubuntu is a culture which places some emphasis on the commonality and on the interdependence of the members of the community. It recognises a person's status as a human being, entitled to unconditional respect, dignity, value and acceptance from the members of the community that such a person may be a part of.

"In South Africa, ubuntu must become a notion with particular resonance in the building of our constitutional democracy."

This ubuntu statement exemplifies the dramatic change in approach on many issues, but certainly that related to the housing the poor, from pre- to post-1994 and demands an appropriate response from both private and public sectors.

And what was the final judgment? Basically, that the City council has failed to comply with the constitutional and statutory obligations of a local authority and has failed to give adequate priority and resources to people in the inner city who are in a crisis situation or in desperate need of accommodation.

Rock and hard place
So, if that is the rock, what's the hard place? Well, it does not provide an answer, on the one hand, to the fact that the city is littered with sinkholes that have to be addressed if the urban regeneration programme is to succeed. And, on the other, it doesn't provide a practical solution to the accommodation needs of thousands of poor people when the sink holes are addressed.
Clearly the relevant pillar of the City's urban renewal strategy - "Address Sinkholes" - must no longer be translated as "Eradicate Sinkholes". We need a radical transformation in our thinking to resolve an issue of major importance to the city and which has a major effect on the city and on the lives of thousands of people.

I understand that in the Alexandra Renewal Project, for instance, the provision of new housing will include accommodation for those who cannot afford to pay - the poorest of the poor - as well as rooms to let in units for those who require that extra income. Sounds like ground-breaking stuff to me. I don't believe that a meaningful response to the problem can be found without both the private sector and the public sector. So here is the second, or is it now third, call for an inner city housing indaba.

And the one surprise I mentioned earlier? Well, the judgment makes it clear that the poor people resident in the so-called "bad buildings" of the inner city of Johannesburg must be given access to a home in the inner city area if the City wants to evict them from accommodation it considers unsafe. The rationale is that it is of no value to push poor people from the inner city to areas where they have no hope of finding opportunities to improve their economic situations.

Where to from here? I have heard suggestions that the judgment should be appealed. That is clearly the City council's decision. Personally I don't believe that this will solve our fundamental problem - how to house the very poor and those unable to pay for accommodation. That is why we need to bring our collective minds to this issue. But what is also being said is that, on the other side of the coin, we have a major problem that the law is not facing up to which relates to sectional title housing. The current law evidently has lead to major exploitation by the occupiers of a number of such units and this is negatively affecting investment.

Well, here is another issue to be unpacked at a housing indaba. But it must be a housing indaba with teeth if it is to have any real value.

Sunday Times
Now, changing step to end with - Thursday night is my night to write a draft Citichat, which I finalise the next morning. But Thursday nights also seem to be popular for launches, openings and other reasons to get together for a variety of events, which makes it quite difficult to discipline oneself, especially if the event is inner city newsworthy and I'm battling for a subject.
There were quite a number of events this Thursday so I chose to pop in to two before settling down at the computer keyboard - an annual function by the Trust for Urban Housing Finance (TUHF) and the Sunday Times unveiling of a bronze of Brenda Fassie in Newtown. Although I didn't stay for long at either because of "the call of the keyboard", both were clearly great affairs.

TUHF has become, in a relatively short space of time, a major player in the inner city's urban regeneration process, funding extensive refurbishment in Bellevue, Berea, Braamfontein, Hillbrow, Joubert Park, Yeoville and the city centre itself. By July last year its commercial funding programme had grown to R127,5-million and funding resources had increased to R209,3-million.

But for me the most exciting aspect of the trust's work is that more than 60 percent of the buildings it has financed have put land and property into the hands of previously disadvantaged individuals. It is a great initiative. Our inner city renewal programme requires more of this approach.

The Sunday Times shindig was part of its centenary celebrations as part of which it is launching a national public artwork project through the erection of a series of memorials that recognise some of the significant people and events of the past century. Last night was the unveiling of a statue to the late Brenda Fassie, whom Time magazine called "The Madonna of the Townships". The sculptor was Angus Taylor.

Ten public artworks will be placed in various parts of metropolitan Johannesburg, which I will cover in a future Citichat as they represent strong support for local artists and will be another welcome addition to what to see in the city.

Cheers, Neil