Daily News: City needs transparency when dealing with poor

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Opinion
City needs transparency when dealing with poor
Report recommends greater consultation with communities in need of housing

October 08, 2008 Edition 1

Imraan Buccus

The report on housing in Durban by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (Cohre) is a watershed movement for this city. The report is the culmination of almost three years of work by an international team of experts and is the first comprehensive analysis of post-apartheid housing policy and practice in the city.

At 200 pages, it is a lengthy read but the basic findings are that there has been a national failure to implement the progressive 2005 Breaking New Ground policy and that, in recent years, there has been a shift from a pro-poor housing agenda to an anti-poor approach that takes the self-built housing solutions of the poor (shacks) rather than the lack of adequate housing as the key problem. This reached a peak with the highly controversial KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act.

The report echoes recent comments from Archbishop Desmond Tutu that RDP houses are simply too small and poorly constructed to be considered as adequate family housing. It finds that here in Durban the eThekwini Municipality has done relatively well in terms of the number of houses it has built.

However, it also notes that some of the houses have been built too far away from town which makes it difficult for people to access work and schools. There are also pervasive allegations of corruption and party political interference in the allocation of houses.

Harassment

Furthermore, the report finds that the provision of basic services to people living in settlements is inadequate to the point of being life threatening. It notes unlawful police harassment of shack dwellers’ organisations and habitual unlawful evictions on the part of the municipality.

Mahendra Chetty, of the Legal Recourses Centre, is cited as saying with regard to evictions that: “The city, as a matter of regular and consistent practice, acts in flagrant breach of the law.”

The report provides a long list of recommendations for better practice. For example, it is stressed that the city must learn to build houses at far greater densities so that more people can be accommodated on well-located land. The report insists that the city must act lawfully towards its poorest residents.

But the primary thrust of the recommendations is towards greater transparency, especially with regard to the allocation of housing, and greater consultation with the communities in dire need of housing.

City officials may argue that greater transparency invites greater debate and that this, together with consultation, will slow things down. This may be true. But it is clear that rushing ahead with a top down set of policies and practices runs a major risk of creating housing developments that actually worsen people’s situations and increase social tensions.

If we decide that a world-class city is one in which visitors only see wealth and the poor are hidden away, it is inevitable that we will start to design our city around the needs of the rich.

If we decide a world class city is one in which everyone has access to a decent and safe life, then it is inevitable that we will begin our interventions with the needs of the poor.

The Cohre report has shown us some of the consequences for the poor that follow from the decision to build our city around the image of wealth. We can no longer pretend that the poor have an interest in being forcibly and sometimes unlawfully removed to low cost housing developments outside of the city.

This may be “development” for the middle class residents who have shack dwellers removed from their suburbs, or it may be “development” for the people who get the contracts to build the low cost houses. It may even be “development” for officials that can chalk down the number of shacks and chalk up the number of houses built. But it is clear that it is not “development” for the poor. In fact, it is an uncomfortable echo of apartheid practices.

It is now equally clear that all the talk about shacks being eradicated by 2010 or 2014 is just fantasy – or, as the report argues, a form of denialism.

Shacks will be part of our cities for many years. We have to face up to this reality and to begin immediately to humanise the settlements.

The Cohre report is constructive in its intentions. We should respond to it in a similar spirit. Perhaps we need some kind of housing summit at which the city, shack dwellers, town planners, legal experts, businesses and ratepayers can get together to hammer out a vision of a just and inclusive city in which development for the rich does not mean banishment to human dumping grounds for the poor.