Human Settlements
Whether he and his Department have plans to provide formal housing to backyarders and wendy house dwellers; if so, what are the relevant details?
It is important to point to out to the Member that backyarders, and wendy-house dwellers is the shorthand term for all households in need of housing, living in overcrowded conditions in formal housing areas including in a wendy-house. These applicants remain on the waiting list with their local municipalities. Each applicant on the housing demand database is allocated a housing opportunity based on their date of registration on the housing demand database/waiting list of the local municipal authority.
My Department has several measures to ensure that households living in overcrowded formal conditions are included in subsidy housing projects in a meaningful and significant fashion.
My Department requires that municipalities ensure that they strike a fair balance between informal settlement dwellers and people living in overcrowded formal conditions across their portfolio of housing projects. Furthermore, in August 2019, my Department issued a directive to give further emphasis to the need for municipalities to implement.
The directive provides for the 50/50 measure which allows for extra priority to be given to households living in formal overcrowded conditions. The 50/50 measure allows municipalities to include households from overcrowded formal conditions in de-densification greenfield projects linked to Upgrade of Informal Settlement Programme (UISP) projects and not only informal settlement dwellers, provided that they meet the qualifying criteria. It is also important to note that along with the elderly, persons living with disabilities and those longest on the Housing Demand Database (HDD), which is 15 years and longer, backyard dwellers are also part of the criteria in the creation of a housing opportunity.
