The City’s public participation drive for three new housing policies comes to an end

The MMC for Housing, councillor Meshack van Wyk said the City of Johannesburg Housing department finalised its last stages of their public participation drive for the draft housing allocation policy, services sites policy and the temporary emergency accommodation on 8 October. 

Van Wyk said he was quite pleased by how many residents had they say on the mention drafted policies above, which will be tabled to the council within the next few months.

He said, “The three policies seek to guide and provide clear processes in how the department proposes to allocate beneficiaries to the RDP houses, how it proposes to implement the new directive of giving people serviced sites to build their own homes, and how to better deal with the very challenging aspect of providing temporary emergency accommodation to those in need. ”

The MMC said the backlog of housing stands at 300 000 units in the city and to meet the demands a solution needs to be found to diversify ways to speed up delivery.

The public drives happened at Johannesburg City Hall, Rabie Ridge and Marlboro Community Hall.

The City wants to move away from ward-based allocations to a first-come, first-served basis. “For applicants, this will finally deliver housing to people who have been waiting for over two decades. It also means residents can be allocated a house anywhere within the City and not based on where they currently reside.”

Van Wyk added that the temporary emergency accommodation policy is aimed at those who find themselves homeless due to an emergency, the policy will clearly clarify what the City is obligated to do.

Lastly, serviced sites policy is proposing an entirely new offering to those who are able to build their own homes but need service stands to do so.

Related article:

https://northeasterntribune.co.za/241670/city-joburgs-department-housing-embarks-policy-public-participation-drive/