Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MA (Public and Development Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / The role of public participation within government administration is set out in Chapter 10 of the Constitution (South Africa, 1996) which states that “people’s needs must be responded to, and the public must be encouraged to participate in policy making”. Public participation processes are encapsulated within various legislative mandates such as the Integrated Development Plans, the White Paper on Local Government (South Africa, 1998c) and the White Paper on Transforming Public Service Delivery (South Africa, 1997b). Public participation is critical to the success of sustainable development and therefore South Africa should justifiably “promote public participation, including through measures that provide access to information regarding legislation, regulations, activities, policies and programmes” (United Nations, 2002:71). The strategies implemented to produce what can be considered successful public participation is an aspect not thoroughly considered in the development process. For this reason this study delves into the various facets of public participation and the environment it operates in. The research methodology encompasses the use of the Mamre low-income housing project as case study, qualitative, primary and secondary data as well as a comparative literature study. where 100 respondents were Face-to-face interviewsed face-to-face were conducted with 100 respondents from the Mamre community, withthrough the use of a structured questionnaire. Face- to- face interviews were also conducted with a municipal housing officer involved in the projectcase study. The results of the questionnaires were then investigated againstcompared to the public participation model depicted in chapter 3 as well as the interview answers given by the municipal housing official in terms of the public participation strategies employed. Qualitative and secondary data, as well as a comparative literature survey, informs the content of this study. The study examines the role that public participation plays in development by means of the public participation strategies employed within different contexts and iii formulates a public participation model with recommended public participation strategies to be utilised within four different phases. To emphasise the importance of implementing the correct, context-appropriate public participation strategies, this study uses the Mamre low-cost housing project as a case study to demonstrate how the lack of the appropriate public participation strategies can result in the failure of sustainable development. Having considered all of the above, a number of recommendations are made which can be considered when embarking on a project similar to this one. In the case of Mamre, an opportunity for improvement still exists, as the project is yet to be completed. The recommendations are based on categorising the public participation strategies Blaauwberg Municipality employed throughout the Mamre low-cost housing project according to the public participation model presented in chapter 3. The recommendations incorporates the lessons learnt from Cupido and suggests a preproject strategy and pre-project planning workshops (which explains, amongst other things, .what authentic and empowering public participation actually is). The research results indicate that if a more structured approach is applied to existing strategies, the public participation process can be rendered authentic and empowering. Therefore, further recommendations are aimed at improving the strategies already utilised by Blaauwberg Municipality, to optimise the public participation process.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Housing, specifically for low-income households in Botswana, has been observed to be one of the housing challenges encountered in the housing sector in Botswana. A number of this population group in the Gaborone area still live in very poor housing conditions, while some are renting in townships where few housing units are of proper quality. The availability of government schemes such as SHHA, which provides housing finance to low and middle-income groups, does not make the significant impact required to alleviate this. As few make use of the scheme, questions have been raised as to whether there are any constraints that hinder low and middle-income households in the use of the scheme, as well as the extent of the impact made by the scheme in delivering affordable housing in Gaborone. The objective of this paper is therefore to examine the SHHA housing finance scheme and further, to assess its effectiveness in housing delivery to low-income urban households. In order to ensure that the findings are reliable, the study examined the plot applications patterns in the SHHA area in Gaborone, the number of funds applications, and the amount disbursed, as well as the status of the SHHA housing projects. All the information is relevant to the past 5 years for SHHA applications, and 10 years for plot application. Commercial financial institutions financially exclude the low-income households, hence their need to access their own housing finance specific to their financial ability. In examining the SHHA scheme, the findings indicate that the main challenge lies in the land allocation, without which one does not have access to SHHA housing finance. There is a huge backlog for land allocation and the lack of plot ownership (due to a shortage of serviced land) means that low-income individuals are not able to effectively use the scheme, and this in turn hinders urban expansion in Gaborone and surrounding areas. Furthermore, there is less availability of housing finance programmes specific to the low-income population in Botswana. The government alone cannot afford to supply funding without a partnership with other private housing developers. The limited number of SHHA loans is making a small change, but is not effective enough to end poor shelters in Gaborone city. To conclude the study, it is recommended that improvement in land and housing policies is the only way to improve conditions. The policies should focus on the target group, and be specific about the partnership between the government and private developers and companies in order to attract them into housing development which will result in a slum-free Gaborone. The legal framework, and the land and housing policies, as well as the Housing Act should directly address private sector participation in housing development for both land use planning and housing.

The purpose of this research was to develop, validate, and test an instrument to evaluate motivations to eat in low-income women during the early postpartum period. The instrument was also used in a sample of young college women to further validate the measure and explore determinants of eating in this population. In study 1, the Eating Stimulus Index was validated in 179 low-income women in early postpartum. Validity and reliability were determined via principal components analysis, internal consistency reliability, and test-retest reliability using a subgroup of 31 low-income new mothers. The factor analysis produced an eight factor structure with reliability coefficients ranging from 0.54-0.89. Convenience eating (r=-0.25, P<0.01), emotional eating (r=-0.17, P<0.05), and dietary restraint (r=-0.21, P<0.01) were significantly related to weight status. In study 2, the relationship between eating motivations and diet quality, determined via the Dietary Guidelines Adherence Index, was established in 115 low-income women in early postpartum. High diet quality was related to fruit and vegetable availability (r=0.25, P<0.01), convenience eating resistance (r=-0.36, P<0.001), and vegetable taste preference (r=0.23, P<0.05). Motivations to eat differed between overweight and obese women with the primary motivation being convenience eating and taste, respectively. In study 3, determinants of weight loss were examined in 58 low-income women in early postpartum participating in an 8-week weight loss intervention. Participants were evaluated at pre- and post-study for all measures. Factors related to weight loss included increases in dietary restraint, weight management skills, and weight loss self-efficacy and decreases in fruit juice servings, total energy, and discretionary energy intakes. After hierarchical regression analysis, improvement in weight loss self-efficacy was the most significant determinant (β=0.263, P<0.05) followed by decreases in discretionary energy intake (β=-0.241, P<0.05). In study 4, determinants of diet quality were assessed in a sample of 88 young college women using the Eating Stimulus Index. Low diet quality was associated with poor fruit and vegetable availability, convenience eating resistance, vegetable taste preference, and weight management self-efficacy, while high diet quality was related to increased frequency of meals prepared at home and decreased frequency of meals consumed at fast food restaurants. / text

The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, authorized in 1986, has gained recognition over the last decade as America's largest place-based subsidized housing production program. The Qualified Census Tract (QCT) provision of the LIHTC program awards developers for projects built in high-poverty neighborhoods. This research examines whether the QCT provision is deconcentrating poverty or instead perpetuating it by comparing QCTs with LIHTC projects against QCTs with no LIHTC projects. In this study, a socioeconomic index is created to examine changes in socioeconomic variables (poverty, income, unemployment, and education) using 1990 Decennial Census data and 2005-2009 American Community Survey data for the twenty most populated MSAs in the United States to determine how LIHTC projects have changed the landscape of poverty in urban QCTs. Control and target groups were established to analyze the impact of LIHTC projects in QCTs. The control group consists of QCTs with no LIHTC projects and the target group contains QCTs with LIHTC projects. In order to determine how the socioeconomic variables have changed over the last fifteen years, the percent change from 1990 to 2005-2009 was calculated for each tract. Independent Sample T-tests were conducted at the national level, MSA level, and county level (when the sample size was large enough) using SPSS to determine if the difference in the target group's derived socioeconomic index and variables were significantly different from the control group. The findings indicate the target groups overwhelmingly outperformed the control groups for the socioeconomic index and every variable except unemployment. The results of this study may be valuable for policymakers to develop thresholds and guidelines for future LIHTC development in areas concentrated by poverty. / by Rebecca J. Walter. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2012. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Thesis (Master of Environmental Management)--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / Over the past decades, environmental problems associated with low-cost housing developments have been reported on a national and global scale (see Sowman and Urquhart, 1998 and also Norville, 2003). Poor community participation in the early stages of project design and lack of public involvement in decision making regarding low cost housing development are said to have contributed to these environmental issues. The environmental issues that have been reported so far relate to escalating water quality due to poor storm water management and improper waste disposal which poses a threat to the natural environment. While there is as emerging view that the nature of environmental problems experienced in these settlements are due to a lack of participation by local people in decision making, there is virtual no studies that have located this analysis within the theoretical debate of modernist planning. The issue that has been ignored thus far is the fact that low cost housing development (in generally) still resembles the spatial pattern of both the modernist and apartheid planning orthodox. It is thus from this context that the local people are increasingly excluded from participating in decision making. This form of modernist development is contrary to the ethos of sustainable development. In essence, sustainable development, as a new development theory, also adheres to the notion of local citizenry involvement in development for the benefits of the future generation. The research study further argues that poor people need to participate in decision making regarding the design and delivery of these houses (Oelefse, 1997). Therefore, the study investigated the underlying environmental implications associated with informal economic activities in a low cost housing establishment. The research study adopted a qualitative research design and an inductive approach. Dunoon was used as a case study for the research. The study used two sampling techniques, purposive sampling and random sampling,were used. Interviews, questionnaires and observations were used to collect data from the residents, informal businesses in Dunoon and key stakeholders from the Department of Environmnental Affairs as well as City of Cape Town. The findings of the thesis illustrate that long-term environmental impacts that are visible in the low-cost housing development of Dunoon are triggered by informal economic activities that are practised by the local people to make a living. In this regard, this thesis argues that local people need to be involved in the early planning and design stages of low-cost housing development. They need to be involved in all development stages to ensure that they drive the vision of the development. Lack of involvement of the local people in the initial stages of decision-making on the project triggered severe long term environmental impacts. The study then concludes that long-term environmental impacts in Dunoon are intertwined with the escalation of informal economic activities initiated by the local people in order to cope with harsh economic realities. These informal activities are a form of reaction to the imposed version of development. Thus, the environmental problems that emerged out of this pattern of human activities must be analysed by means of conceptualising the Dunoon low-cost housing as a product of modernist planning philosophy. Based on the information gathered and discussed in this thesis, it is concluded that the low-cost housing development is a product of modernist planning.

This student-centered analysis of caring in three academically promising, low-income public high schools in Texas used an instrumental case study design (Stake, 1998) to investigate students' perceptions and experiences of receiving care in high school. The analysis also examined the teacher and administrator practices that contributed to students' experience of receiving care, and considered the resources that supported the adults' caring practice at the three schools. Archival data consisting of open-ended interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and school staff were analyzed qualitatively. Results suggest that caring should be evaluated in context. In the high school context students experience care through having their teachers' and administrators’ help and support with academics. Results also suggest that students experience caring through teacher and administrator behaviors and attitudes that respond to their developmental needs. That is, they experience care when adults at school establish a style and pattern of interaction similar to "authoritative parenting" (Baumrind, 1987). Recognition from adults in the school is very important for high school students, and especially salient for low-income and minority adolescents who often receive negative and discriminatory feedback from the community. / text

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.

This thesis set out to examine the application of the supporter paradigm in the incremental housing process in South Africa, and the way support for housing consolidation has been orchestrated in practice. It aimed to determine the forms of housing support that constitute preconditions of housing consolidation in the South African low income housing context. The supporter paradigm upon which post-apartheid housing policy is based takes its cue from the proponents of self-help housing, and the institutions that have entrenched it internationally. It outlines the housing support actions that would enable poor households to achieve housing adequacy incrementally . In South Africa, such households would constitute housing subsidy beneficiaries, seeking to achieve housing 'depth' through the process of housing consolidation, where the national subsidy programme would primarily only have delivered housing 'width' , or housing starts. Contrary to the expectations of the policy, the pace of housing consolidation has been slow, and the standard of the resultant housing poor. The thesis ' point of departure is that households which have not improved their dwellings, or whose improvement efforts have only yielded temporary housing, continue to experience housing inadequacy, despite subsidy support. This outcome contradicts the policy 's goal of enabling households to reach housing adequacy. That subsidy support is but one of a number of supports needed to enable housing consolidation is acknowledged by current policy. This study critiques the way support has been lent to households in consolidating situations conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, the study analyses the international and South African policy discourse around the support approach to housing delivery, as well as looks at some precedents in housing support practice internationally for useful lessons. Empirically, the study makes use of qualitative and quantitative research instruments to examine and analyse the housing support experience in three different types of incremental housing projects, located in eThekwini municipality, in the KwaZulu Natal Province of South Africa . The housing support findings are analysed within the context of what both the housing policy and the study 's key informants consider to be a holistic packaging of housing support, that should be attendant to any incremental housing project. On the basis of the study's findings, housing support practice is critiqued on two levels. At policy level, the study reveals that the foundation of South African housing policy in a neoliberal context, in the absence of support targeted at improving the incomes of the mainly very poor beneficiaries, sets them up for failure in their housing improvement efforts. At the implementation level, the study identifies three key areas of weakness. Firstly, there is absence of strategic direction at the National level, resulting in the treatment of housing support as an optional function by the housing implementation levels. Secondly, most housing authorities experience difficulty in understanding what housing support entails, because of its multifaceted nature and lack of specificity . Consequently, the support attendant to incremental housing projects is ad hoc and intermittent in nature, and is delivered on the basis of how the particular authorities or project staff understand housing support. As a result, in any given project, housing support is rarely comprehensively packaged. It is also largely an unfunded mandate. Thirdly, at project level, the thesis establishes that many of the problems that confront consolidating households can be attributed to projects that are poorly planned from the outset, and that support in this regard lies in the development of capacity at municipal level, to plan projects that have the potential to be consolidated in the first instance. As its main contribution, the thesis develops a multidimensional, comprehensive framework for packaging housing support. One dimension specifies upfront, the support elements considered important in the pre- and post-subsidy phases of the project, as well as in the project implementation phase. The exact form these would take in any project would be informed by the project and beneficiary characteristics. The second dimension packages the institutional roles for housing support, thereby removing the institutional ambivalence towards the housing support function, and specifying the institutional and role changes needed to enable housing support to occur. The third dimension packages support according to project type, indicating which forms of support apply to all types of projects, and which to specific modes of delivery in the South African context. The study concludes that while current housing policy is clear on the need to support households to meet consolidation goals, specificity of both process and actions needs to be lent to housing support practice. The multidimensional support package developed by the study is deemed a useful tool in providing such specificity, and clarifying how support for housing consolidation in South Africa should be set up in both policy and practice. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.