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Strategies for sustainable housing co-operatives in South Africa

An increasing number of people are in need of housing that would improve long-term tenure for them. Private ownership is a well-known incentive for peoples’ participation in housing programmes. The current difficulties in obtaining credit for housing, following the global economic crisis, show that private individual home-ownership is not effective enough in addressing the housing needs of the low and middle income groups. As a result of this, the need to find an option that will solve the housing needs of the people became intense. However, the implementation of the co-operative housing delivery option in South Africa has not been successfully implemented as a result of the actions or the inactions of the role players. The study sought answer to the causes of the inability to successfully implement the co-operative housing approach through the use of ‘triad model’ that has to do with the ideology of co-operatives, the praxis and the organisational structures of the various housing co-operatives. The study was domiciled in a pragmatic paradigm, using the mixed methods research approach by conducting a three-stage research whereby convergent parallel design was adopted as the methodology. Questionnaires were administered to the chairpersons of the housing co-operatives identified in this stage one of the study. Stage two consisted of conducting interviews with chairpersons of six housing co-operatives using the purposive non-probability sampling method. The final stage was the survey among the members of the housing co-operatives interviewed. It was discovered, inter alia, that the membership of housing co-operatives was not voluntary; policy and legislative documents on social housing were biased against the co-operative housing approach; limited understanding of the co-operative approach exists among officials of government responsible for the implementations and a lack of training to members of the housing co-operatives by agencies of government responsible for propagating the approach was evident. Based on the findings, framework for sustainable housing co-operatives in South Africa was proposed from the strategies identified. The strategies identified were classified into the following factors: Policy and legislation; support services; education, training and information; and governance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9690
Date January 2012
CreatorsJimoh, Richard Ajayi
ContributorsVan Wyk, J J
PublisherNelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment and Information Technology
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Doctoral, PhD
Formatxxvi, 272 leaves, pdf
RightsNelson Mandela Metropolitan University

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