The rise, fall, and rebirth of community-centred housing

1. The rise, fall, and rebirth of community-centred housing Built Environment Support Group Presentation to the DAG National Conference October 2010

2. The genesis Established in 1983 by academics within the then University of Natal Department of Architecture and Allied Disciplines. Pietermaritzburg branch office established in 1991. Focus in the “struggle years” was defence campaigns against evictions from informal settlements in urban areas, largely formed as a result of inter-political party violence and also natural urban migration. In the early 1990’s, BESG was a key civil society player in shaping pro-poor planning and housing policies from local to national level; participated in the PMB Low Income Settlement Task Team and National Housing Forum (birth of the national housing subsidy scheme).

4. The new dispensation • Many of the communities that BESG had supported sought our assistance in leveraging resources for permanent settlement: -- IDT site-and-service programme in the early 90s -- National housing subsidy scheme from 1995. • They had a poor relationship with local government, and knew BESG had technical skills to help them drive their own development. • As a consequence, BESG became a prominent player in community-driven low income housing through the 90s and first half of this decade.

5. BESG’s vision and mission • Vision • BESG envisions a future in which all people in South Africa will live in a participatory democracy with equal access to habitable and sustainable living environments and livelihood security. • Mission  • BESG exists to support the poor and vulnerable to access resources and increasingly gain control over their lives and destinies, through the promotion of sustainable livelihoods and habitable environments, achieving basic socio-economic rights and capacitating local government, with added emphasis on small rural towns.  (The expansion into peri-urban and rural areas began in 2006.)

6. Strength in unity • BESG was not alone in this journey. In 1995, the European Union, which had funded many rights-based NGOs in the struggle years, encouraged NGOs to form into sectors or clusters for ease of future funding. • This led to the formation of the Urban Sector Network, a group of 8 NGOs located in the major cities around the country, who shared a common agenda around urban development, community support, and policy advocacy through a combination of research and practice. • There are few if any players outside the USN who engage in a rights-based approach to meeting basic needs in poor urban communities. • Regrettably EU funding of the NGO sector dried up in 2004 in favour of government-to-government support – one of the negative impacts of the new dispensation, as it has weakened the resource base of civil society and its ability to engage critically with the state.

7. Pioneering housing work • 1995-7: Completed the first “in situ” housing project in Happy Valley/ Ntuthukoville, Woodlands • 1996-2004: Completed the first scale low income housing upgrade project at Glenwood 2 (1600 households) • 1997: Established one of the two first “People’s Housing Process” Support Services in KZN, in Glenwood 2. • 1999: Completed the first transitional housing project in KZN from the former Homedene Working Men’s Hostel (Ubunye Housing Cooperative), PMB CBD • 2001: Completed design & construction of 320 social housing units at Shayamoya,Cato Manor.

10. Methodology • BESG typically worked in partnership with a democratically elected, community-based trust that contracted BESG to provide or procure professional services. • We aimed to give equal weight to organisational development and technical support. • This enabled those community structures to articulate and engage in a wide range of other activities such as savings clubs, the construction and management of community facilities, greening projects, community-based infrastructure maintenance and solid waste removal. • Some critics of BESG’s methodology, particularly stakeholders in or aligned to the social movements, claim that it is a “technocratic” approach. Rather, it is a process of empowerment through knowledge, creating space for critical dialogue with state organs, and very often mediating outcomes.

11. Risks and opportunities • The fragility of BESG’s intervention model was that it could be easily disrupted by changes in political leadership, both internally and externally, and contestation over access to resources. • BESG often works in a given community for several years before “development” becomes the dominant agenda. This enables us to gauge the level of social stability and cohesion in a community, and their ability to take ownership of, or least influence, the processes and outcomes of a development intervention. • Those early/intermediate interventions involve a combination of capacity building and mobilisation through engagement in less complex activities – food gardening, building a community hall, environmental work such as litter clean-ups and removing destructive alien vegetation. This is the social capital that is captured in the new Enhanced People’s Housing Process policy adopted in 2008 as “community contributions.”

12. Public procurement --a gifthorse or poisoned chalice? • BESG’s positioning in the sector changed fundamentally with the advent of the Municipal Systems Act and Public Finance Management Act. • Responsibility for development was placed with local government, and access to housing subsidy became subject to a competitive tender process in place of an application-based system. • We won our first three tenders in 2001 and 2002, obtained conditional approval in 2004, and are still awaiting contracts from the local municipality to enable us to recover substantial design costs and proceed into implementation. • The change to public procurement fundamentally altered our relationship with key roleplayers. We became servants of a dysfunctional local government, while local development committees were systematically intimidated and marginalised by ward Councillors and committees, and in turn by branch executive committees of the ruling party seeking to take control of processes for which they do not have the requisite competencies. • The change also exposed BESG financially. Our level of involvement in implementing housing projects has been drastically curtailed as a result, and a separate legal entity has been established to contain capital risk from our donor-funded work.

13. New horizons? • The adoption of the Enhanced People’s Housing Process (EPHP) policy saw a distinct shift from housing delivery to the building of sustainable human settlements. • Community engagement in development processes helps to promote active citizenship and break the entitlement culture that characterised “RDP housing.” • Community engagement also helps to ensure acceptability of the end-product and commitment to protect its functional and asset value.

14. Challenges in supporting community-centred housing • Long lead times  difficult to maintain community commitment and stability of leadership. • Political challenges – contestation for leadership and conflation of political and ward committee structures. • KZN requires projects to be allocated at provisional approval stage, prefers turnkey contract route  cannot disaggregate infrastructure and housing, development risk. • Corruption and BBBEE endemic in the industry; not conducive to an NGO participating in delivery (but EPHP offers a new window). • Fragmentation of state funding, poor horizontal alignment, and PFMA create difficulties in delivering value-adding community contributions (clean-ups, maintenance, community and sports facilities, etc.)

15. Conditions necessary for EPHP implementation BESG, along with other USN affiliates, has been a member of a cross-sectoral reference group assisting the Department of Human Settlement to develop an implementation framework and guidelines for rolling out EPHP. Some of the conditions necessary for effective implementation include: • The finalisation of the implementation framework and a dedicated funding stream being available through participating provinces. • The release of well-located, serviced or serviceable land; and the in situ upgrading of informal settlements where technical conditions and affordability permit. • Improved alignment between Integrated Development Plans and municipal budgets. • A substantial increase in sector capacity – infrastructure and housing delivery are highly complex and regulated processes, and there are insufficient numbers of genuine civil society actors with adequate experience to deliver at scale. • Leaders within social movements need to mobilise their membership to work constructively with organs of state and with professionals who demonstrate a mindset to place service before profit. • Municipalities and other state organs need to work in partnership with civil society, to play an enabling role in releasing well-located land and providing basic services.

16. Challenges in the interface with local government • Local government and civil society often become antagonistic as a result of municipalities’ paternalistic approach to service delivery, and communities’ frustration at the slow pace of service delivery. • There are many institutional obstacles to local government playing an enabling, rather than a controlling, role. Some of the challenges in achieving true, developmental local government include: • De-politicising the Ward Committee system. Ward Committees are commonly used to dispense patronage and undermine genuine community structures that they are supposed to represent. • Producing empirically-based Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). • Ensuring municipal budgets are aligned to the IDPs. • Employing or deploying staff with relevant skills into development support functions. • Preventing the leakage of equitable share grant, intended to provide basic services to indigent households, into municipal salaries. • Developing strategies to provide basic services and dignity to communities caught in long housing delivery backlogs.

17. The new struggle • Evicted by order of the High Court • Waiting 13 years for “fast track” development • No water, no toilet • Community leadership removed by the party we voted for • Cannot speak to BESG without a member of the party Branch Executive being present

18. Conclusion • Local authority-driven development has failed many communities in need of secure tenure, basic services, and shelter. • We have a legacy of poorly located and poorly constructed “RDP housing” that has entrenched apartheid spatial planning and deepens poverty. • Community-driven housing offers an alternative paradigm that creates true “ownership” – active citizenship and vibrant, sustainable communities -- instead of people being trapped in a house too far from amenities and work opportunities and too small for the average household.

19. Contact details Built Environment Support Group (BESG) 371 Jabu Ndlovu Street Pietermaritzburg 3201/ P.O. Box 1369 Pietermaritzburg 3200 00- 27- 33- 394 4980 besgpmb@sn.apc.org www.besg.co.za