M. Tech. Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

The right to adequate housing is recognized internationally as a basic human right. South Africa is one of the countries that include this basic right as one of the cornerstones in its constitution. Quite a number of ways and means have been implemented and various kinds of mechanisms have been put into place to kickstart and spearhead the process of providing shelter mainly to the poor segments of the communities in South Africa at large. Towards this end the South African Housing Policy is formulated around the notion of the enabling approach whereby state assistance in the form of a lump sum subsidy is given to households to enhance and intensify the beneficiaries' own efforts towards improving their housing. In other words the smooth operation of the enabling approach is to a large extent dependent on the individuals' substantial contribution in many if not all aspects of housing process. The study demonstrates that since the implementation of this enabling approach too little has been achieved in terms of housing delivery. The study therefore identifies three key issues (among other issues) that are seen as major bottlenecks in the implementation of the enabling approach in housing delivery for all. The study argues that in order for the beneficiaries to consolidate their housing, they need to augment their low-income with a loan or any other form of a housing credit. It is the central argument of this study in this regard that proper housing credit mechanisms suited to the circumstances of the low-income groups have not been adequately addressed. The study further observes that the majority of low-income groups do not have proper labour and employment skills in that these groups also lack access to employment opportunities. This study therefore adopts the position that proper structures need to be put in place in-order to eradicate these above-mentioned major hurdles standing in the way of the enabling approach. The study argues that if these issues are not adequately addressed, housing consolidation among low-income groups will remain a major problem and the enabling approach will eventually be regarded as non-viable and incompetent. / Thesis (M.Arch.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

Thesis (M.B.A.)-Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology, 2006 v, 96 leaves, Annexures A-F / The marginal and low-income groups face a number of obstacles in their quest to secure housing finance to improve their living conditions. South Africa has a sophisticated and effective finance system. However, it appears that the only beneficiaries from it are the middle and upper income groups of the housing market. The whole system of accessing housing finance has proven to be problematic for the marginal and lower income groups for various reasons, among others: it is not user friendly and is not easily understood by an illiterate or poorly educated person. The key challenge for the South African housing finance system is to find ways of bridging the gap between those who have a regular income and those who do not. The credit gap exists because of the relationship between risk and cost which is a standard lending issue across the globe. The study has unpacked the obstacles by looking at the literature and role players in the housing finance.

Thesis (MSc (Consumer Science)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / The South African government drafted a national housing policy in 1994. This policy is being implemented in terms of seven strategies. One of the housing strategies is to provide subsidy assistance to low-income groups to enable them to become home owners and improve their quality of life. The delivery of state-subsidised housing will help to reduce the housing backlog and to reach the goal of eradicating informal settlements by 2014. The purpose of this study was to determine the levels of housing satisfaction of residents in state-subsidised housing units.

Currently, the actions of housing provision in Brazil have a high degree of institutional and financial complexity, in despite of their massive divulgation in overly simple propagandas. It is observed that the implementation of the housing policies is motivated by interests related to the accelerated growth of the housing production in national level. Therefore, in several cases, such policies are not in connection with the regional dynamics and the local environmental demands. In view of this, the present research is justified by the needed of an analysis of the deployments and effects of the new Brazilian housing policies, situating it in the context of the intrametropolitan differences. It was defined as general objective: analyze the housing expansion in the metropolitan zone of Aracaju (SE) - MZA between the years of 2000 and 2013, taking in to account it relations with the urban environment, infrastructure situation and the arising of new agglomerates of housing buildings. The bibliographical and documental research, the survey of secondary data, as well as the direct observation and the photographic survey done in field allowed to identify, from socioenvironmental indicators and cartographic analyzes, the areas of MZA with densification of housing built with resources of the government obtained through of financings started in the 2000 decade. It was analyzed the conditions of urban infrastructure of the new occupied spaces by categories of analysis established. Considering the frame observed from the evolution of the quantity, of the location and of the types of buildings that emerged in the MZA; from the typologies of the domiciles and the characteristics of the evolution and distribution of the population, it can be perceived that the intense provision in market popular housing will, until a certain point, be justified by the diminution of a housing deficit based in objective terms. It was evidenced that the effects of the housing policy implemented between the years of 1980 and 1990 and the housing shortages certainly should to move in the sense of the regularization of precarious settlements and improvement of the habitability conditions for the residential unities that were massively implanted until now. If these movements do not occur, the new condominiums built with the perspective of the supply to the needed of the middle class will consist in an big volume of buildings that will be rented by families that have conditions to migrate to newer housings and get out from areas with little urban infrastructure, or just that desire to live in these new spaces, but cannot to buy the new buildings and are influenced by the massive divulgation of the advantages of to live in the closed condominiums. In the evaluation of the interfaces between the housing provision and the natural constraints in the MZA, it can be stated that the new fronts of occupation are mostly in lands that already were semi-grounded or grounded since 2004, however located to the margin of areas of natural content that must be conserved. The frontier area between Aracaju and São Cristóvão (the neighborhoods of Jabotiana and Cabrita) corresponds to the portion of the MZA where it is found the bigger events of dismount of natural characteristics. Finally, with respect to the questions formulated for the research, it can be stated that the applications of the federal resources in housing does not occur in agreement with the socioenvironmental dimensions established in their policies and programs in the areas that are most affected. / Atualmente as ações de provisão habitacional no Brasil possuem elevada complexidade institucional e financeira, apesar da sua massiva divulgação em propaganda demasiadamente simples. Observa-se que as políticas habitacionais são materializadas por interesses originários do ideário de crescimento acelerado da política em nível nacional e, portanto, apresentam-se em diversos casos, desconectadas da dinâmica regional e demandas socioambientais locais. Esta pesquisa justifica-se pela necessidade de análise dos desdobramentos e efeitos da nova política habitacional brasileira, situando-a no contexto das diferenciações intrametropolitanas. Definiu-se, a partir daí, como objetivo geral: Analisar a expansão habitacional na Região Metropolitana de Aracaju (SE) - RMA, no período de 2000 e 2013, considerando suas relações com o ambiente urbano, situação da infraestrutura e o surgimento de novos aglomerados de edificações. Para tanto, realizou-se pesquisa bibliográfica, documental e de dados secundários; bem como a observação direta e levantamento fotográfico em campo. Além disso, identificaram-se a partir de indicadores socioambientais e análise cartográfica as áreas da RMA com adensamento de edificações enquadradas nos financiamentos governamentais desde a década de 2000 e; analisaram-se as condições de infraestrutura urbana dos novos espaços mediante as categorias de análise estabelecidas. Considerando a evolução da quantidade, localização e tipos de construções que emergiram na RMA, as tipologias de domicílios e características da evolução e distribuição da população, percebe-se que a intensa provisão na habitação popular de mercado dificilmente pode ser justificada pela diminuição de um déficit habitacional fundamentado em termos objetivos. Evidenciou-se que ainda repercutem na RMA, os efeitos da política habitacional implementada nos anos 1980 e 1990, e a satisfação das necessidades habitacionais deveriam caminhar no sentido da regularização de assentamentos precários e melhoria das condições de habitabilidade para as unidades residenciais que já foram implantadas massivamente até então. Caso essa mudança de direção não ocorra, os novos condomínios edificados com a perspectiva de suprimento à necessidade da classe média consistirão em um grande volume de imóveis destinados à locação, seja por famílias que tenham condições de migrar para as habitações mais novas e sair das áreas com pouca infraestrutura urbana, ou então, para aquelas que almejam morar nos novos espaços, mas não conseguiram adquirir os imóveis e encontram-se tendenciadas pela divulgação massiva das vantagens de morar nos condomínios fechados. Na avaliação das interfaces entre a provisão habitacional e os condicionantes naturais na RMA, pode-se afirmar que as novas frentes de ocupação estão em sua maioria em terrenos que já se encontravam semiaterrados ou aterrados desde 2004, contudo já margeiam áreas de conteúdo natural que deve ser conservado. A área limítrofe entre Aracaju e São Cristóvão (bairro Jabotiana e região da Cabrita) corresponde à porção da RMA onde se constatam os maiores eventos de desmonte das características naturais. Por fim, em se tratando das questões formuladas para pesquisa, pode-se afirmar que a aplicação dos recursos do Governo Federal em habitação, nas áreas que têm seus efeitos mais evidenciados, não ocorre em concordância com as dimensões socioambientais estabelecidas em sua política e programas.

The post-apartheid government inherited an urban housing backlog of approximately 1.3 million units at its inception in 1994. This huge backlog was partially contributed by apartheid discriminatory administrations and laws such as the Black (Native) Laws Amendment Act, No 46 of 1937 and the Black Communities Development Act, No 4 of 1984 along with rapid urbanization during the post-apartheid period. In a bid to address past injustice related to housing, it has become necessary for the post-apartheid government to diversify housing delivery approach to include alternative development and delivery strategies, methodologies and products including upgrading of informal settlements, and increasing rental stock. The human settlements department also encouraged the establishment and implementation of self-help housing through the establishment of the People Housing Process (PHP). It is the implementation of this programme that led to the establishment of the SACTSP aimed at enhancing South African housing service delivery using Cuban experience. The programme has been implemented in the South African human settlements sector since 2002. The focus of this research is to evaluate the impact of the South African Cuban Technical Support Programme (SACTSP) in the lives of the South African housing beneficiaries. The collected and analysed data, to a large degree, confirmed the effect of the programme in the lives of the beneficiaries. The research design of the study is a multiple Case Studies approach. The scope of the study is the three provinces participating in the SACTSP, which are Mpumalanga (MP), Western Cape (WC), and Limpopo (LP). The intention was to have both the control group and the intervention group in the same province, but due to the over usage of the CTA’s in these provinces the researcher decided to use Gauteng Province (GP), a non-participating province in the programme, as a control group. This is also due to the fact that the province (Gauteng) is also commonly known for publicly criticising the effectiveness of the SACTSP programme. Data was collected in three housing projects from the three Gauteng Metropolitan Municipalities Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and City of Johannesburg. The selected projects were Mamelodi Extension 5 in Tshwane, Villa Lisa (Boksburg) in Ekurhuleni and Driekiek Extension 3 in Orange Farm, Johannesburg. The selected projects where the CTAs participated (experimental group) were Chicago Bulls at Strand in Cape Town (WC), Thekwane South Housing Projects, Nelspruit in Mpumalanga and Westernburg at Polokwane in Limpopo Province. In each unit of evaluation, questionnaires to collect data were distributed to the rightful owners (beneficiaries) of the houses, who were above eighteen years of age. (Annexure A). The participants, all rightful owners of state subsidies, were identified by means of purposive sampling. The main goal of purposive sampling is to focus on particular characteristics of a population that are of interest, which will best enable the researcher to answer the research questions Semi-structured interview questions were also conducted to the main stakeholders in the housing circle. This includes officials in all spheres of government involves in delivering sustainable human settlements (Annexure B). The selection is also influenced by what is called the “good enough” rule in formulating evaluation research (Rossi et al., 2012:28). Stated simply the “good enough” rule advocates that the evaluator should choose the strongest possible design from a methodological stand point after having taken into account the potential importance of the results, the practicality and feasibility of each design and the probability that the design chosen will produce useful and credible results (Rossi et al., 2012:33) The collected data was analysed and presented in five principal stages involving descriptive and inferential statistics. The first phase involves presenting the reliability of the instrument using Cronbach’s alpha. The second phase presents the descriptive statistics of the sample using frequencies, and proportions for categorical data and means and standard deviations for continuous variables. The validity of the instrument then follows using exploratory factor analysis which explains the observed variables that are linked to underlying factors. The fourth phase involves calculation of composite variables using the means and averages to determine the trend patterns in the data. The central limit theorem was applied to the data and comparative analyses were done to determine whether views differed by socio-demographic variables. The two sample independent t-tests were done to determine whether views of the respondents differed for two-categorical variables and the one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to determine whether views differ for variables with more than two categories. The fifth stage presented the correlation analysis which was used to determine the extent or degree of the relationship between the constructs. The findings of the studies confirm the effectiveness of the programmes in the participating provinces. The study also discovered that, CTA’s are mostly transferring skills to contractors who happened to be working close to the CTAs and only to beneficiaries in a few instances. This is due to the nature of the self-help model that the South African government adopted which involves private contractors in building PHP houses. This model ignores the national PHP policy and guidelines which recognise beneficiaries as the main drivers of the PHP. The study concludes by recommending the department policy makers to monitor and enforce correct implementation of formulated policy to close the gaps that are usually created between policy formulation and implementation. / Public Administration and Management / D. Admin. (Public Administration)

Thesis (PhD (Consumer Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / In the ten years since the inclusive elections of 1994, the South African government has created an international precedent in the housing field. It is widely acknowledged that in this period it has delivered more subsidised houses than any other country in the world. The housing backlog is still between 2 to 3 million and growing every year, so housing policies for the future must continue to , not only provide subsidised housing for a large part of the population but also seeking to establish a viable market for low-cost housing units and to create sustainable human settlements for low-income groups. There are a therefore large numbers of new consumers that enter the housing market for the first time.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

The inadequate housing allowance, rental allowance, taxable subsidies and housing shortages in developing countries are some of the challenges of the 21st century. Namibia is no exception. The study is aimed at figuring out whether government actions and interventions are meant to address homelessness challenges for low-income households. Furthermore, the research problem is broadened to gain insight on the effects from four countries’ housing policies as covered in the study; namely Namibia, Botswana, Nigeria and South Africa. The literature review undertaken proved that Botswana and South Africa have the best housing allowance schemes for public servants below management cadres, and have already successfully addressed public housing problems in their respective countries. Other findings of the study are; land shortage for housing development, housing affordability problems, escalating prices for building materials, lack of intergovernmental relations systems, unemployment and low incomes. Several recommendations include; to assist the Namibian government to emulate good examples of Botswana and South Africa, especially by providing land free of charge to its citizens (in the case of Botswana), solve financial institutions’ attitude of denying low-in-come earners loans, review housing allowances, rent allowances and subsidies every two years, increase government/member contribution ratios to either 50 percent or 100 percent due to high inflation rates. Stop distorting housing market prices by property developers and come up with a housing pricing policy for Namibia. / Public Administration / M.A. (Public Administration)