SOCA discloses 70 000 units in Jozi’s mega housing projects

04 May 2016

 

Johannesburg Executive Mayor Councillor Parks Tau said integrated mega housing projects that the City had undertaken in various parts of the metropolis had yielded almost 70 000 units.

 

Mayor Tau was speaking during his State of the City Address in Turffontein, south of Johannesburg, on Wednesday May 4.  The integrated housing developments – easily the most ambitious mixed-income housing initiatives to be rolled out in recent times – are in Fleurhof, South Hills, Lufhereng, Riverside and Malibongwe Ridge. They add to the City’s housing successes in areas such as Lehae, Cosmo City and the Golden Triangle.

 

Mayor Tau said in a bid to address the housing challenge in Johannesburg, the City recently conducted a comprehensive audit of 181 informal settlements within its jurisdiction. It found these informal settlements had a combined a total of 168 000 households, the vast majority of which had access to basic water and sanitation.

“We have electrified 15 of these [informal settlements] – from Sejwetla to Lawley Station and Thembelihle – with another six to be completed before the end of term,” Mayor Tau said. 

 

“It is [also] encouraging to note that we have formalised nearly 29 000 informal sector homes where they stood, and relocated over 600 other households to linked housing projects.”  

 

The Mayor also said the City was working with a wide range of partners to support the upgrading of backyard informal dwellings to “new kinds of formal dwellings based on designs submitted to an open competition we ran last year”.  This, he said, represented an informal sector providing more than 350 000 households with rental accommodation. 

 

The Executive Mayor added that the City was actively engaging communities such as Zandspruit, Hopefield, Kapok and Slovoville to find long-term solutions to challenges in their settlements.

 

Zandspruit was marred by violent protests in recent weeks following a clampdown on illegal electricity connections in the area.  

Gauteng MEC for Human Settlements Paul Mashatile intervened and called for the establishment of a task team to find a resolution to the impasse.