Preparing the groundwork to tackle housing backlog

 

Hundreds of fieldworkers will from Thursday next week pour into the streets of Region F neighbourhoods and move from door to door in a massive drive to verify the status of people on the City of Johannesburg’s housing waiting list.
 

The Region F campaign, launched at Kliprivierberg Recreational Centre in Kibler Park on Tuesday January 27, will run until May 29. The areas to be covered include the Johannesburg inner city, Naturena, Diepkloof Extension 10, Fordsburg, Braamfontein and Yeoville, as well as several suburbs in the south and south-eastern Johannesburg, including Rosettenville, Turffontein, Winchester Hills, Malvern and Kensington. 
 

Speaking on behalf of Executive Mayor Councillor Parks Tau, Member of the Mayoral Committee for Development Planning and Urban Management Councillor Roslynn Greeff said the updated housing waiting list would give City officials an indication of the extent of the housing need in the city.
 

“Through the campaign, we’ll be able to trace and check if the status of the people on the housing waiting list has changed or not. The updated database will be used to determine the type of housing that needs to be built,” MMC Greeff said.

This is the second housing waiting list verification campaign to be launched since the rollout of the pilot project in Region D – which constitutes large parts of Soweto – between  May and September 2013.
 

The first of three regional campaigns covering Region A, E, and F –  Region E – was launched at the Alexsan Kopano Resource Centre in Alexandra on Wednesday last week.
 

The pilot project covered 45 wards and a total of 210 796 households and involved about 315 fieldworkers.

Campaign Manager and Housing Director Thulani Nkosi said the fieldworkers who would be deployed to verify the status of people on the city’s housing waiting would be easily identifiable because they would be wearing branded caps, T-shirts and bibs and carrying identity cards to keep criminals at bay.
 

“Ward councillors will have photos of all the field workers. Should residents be suspicious, ward councillors must be their first port of call,” Nkosi said. 

He also urged residents living in access-controlled properties to allow fieldworkers access as every house had to be checked.

“Everyone must be traced and tagged,” Member of the Mayoral Committee for Housing Councillor Dan Bovu said.

The MMC said in the allocation of subsidised houses, priority would be given to military veterans, the elderly and child headed  homes, as well as the disabled. 
 

“When you build a house for an elderly person, you build for the nation. Generation after generation stand to benefit. Other vulnerable groups such as domestic workers also need to be protected,” he said.

MMC Greeff added that in the inner city the municipality was converting previously hijacked buildings into affordable rental housing apartments to accommodate those whose changed financial circumstances precluded them from receiving subsidised housing. 
 

She said inner city developments such as the recently unveiled South Hills and other projects in the pipeline would ensure that residents live near their places of work.
 

“Research has shown that working-class people spend most of their income on food and transport as they live too far from places of economic opportunities. Through the City’s Corridors of Freedom, we want to change that and transform their lives,” she said.