Transcript HSRC: Housing Research

HSRC/CPEG
PARLIAMENTARY
BRIEFING: HOUSING
PROJECT: IPDM SETTLEMENT
TYPOLOGY AND DEMAND PROFILING
20 OCTOBER 2008
A WORLD FUTURE OF
SLUMS?
The UNFPA’s recent State of the World Population
Report 2007 points to a global future with slums
surrounding most major cities of the developing
world
Almost alone, South Africa is out in front of this trend –
• National anti-poverty policy is already striving to place the
urbanizing poor into serviced housing before slums can
lock down
• And is working to reduce shack areas by replacing them with
government housing
 This policy thrust leads the world – and it is vital to national
poverty reduction goals that housing delivery moves fast
Fast sure housing delivery requires accurate targeting –
HSRC HOUSING RESEARCH
IMPACTS
•
PROJECT: INTEGRATED PLANNING, DEVELOPMENT &
MODELLING (IPDM)
• DST Technology for Social Impacts; HSRC + CSIR partnership
• HSRC component: Demographics of housing and settlement
• HSRC focus: Local government delivery of housing and services, at
community level
• Product: Ground-breaking new approach to targeting housing delivery
– and:
 HSRC’s research results also underscore the overall success of
government housing delivery, and
 Highlight the role of government subsidy housing in
generating a rising wave of good quality self-build housing
across both urban and rural sectors
By complementing subsidy housing, this new government-initiated
housing trend introduces a new delivery mode –
Subsidy housing + self-build can help complete government’s task of
housing the poor faster + at lower cost to the fiscus
PRESENTATION
This presentation will look first at defining and targeting
housing demand
• Focus: HSRC’s demographic settlement typology
• and the wall charts for settlement type
 New ways to help target beneficiaries with the right
type of housing
Second, it looks at research findings from the IPDM 3000case survey
• Focus: how self-build housing is spreading in response
to government’s subsidy housing programme
 With some national implications
1, TARGETING: HOUSING
AGAINST POVERTY
Government’s basic approach to economic
equality has been housing-based asset
accumulation (Hirsch 2005)
• Government provides poor families free housing as a platform for selfinvestment and saving
• And counts on them to move successfully into the national economy
as earners and participating citizens
This approach depends on families receiving the right
kind of housing asset to meet their needs
 If the right housing is not delivered, beneficiaries often
sell their subsidy houses at very cheap prices
This risk is associated with ineffective targeting and can
chip away the asset value of subsidy housing delivery
TARGETING HOUSING AT
COMMUNITY LEVEL
The Breaking New Ground housing policy allows for a range of
subsidy housing options – now, new inclusionary options
Recent decisions also encourage self-build housing –
Housing goes in at IDP level, but there is a blank
here in planning data – delivery is flying blind
• At community level where lack of targeting data is
slowing down delivery of housing
• Government does not yet produce community-level
targeting data for housing delivery –
 HSRC’s settlement demographics research is moving toward
addressing this gap
• This work is developing evidence-based local-level
targets to support faster delivery
PLANNING NEEDS
AT THE I D P LEVEL
For delivery planning to work at the local level, it
needs to break down the municipal target
population
At community level, where delivery goes in
• The breakdown has to estimate IDP delivery targets
• And figure in migration, as the single main disruptor of
population projections
• And come out very accessible and user-friendly, aligned
for municipalities with little time for data work
• HSRC has tackled this problem through a demographic
approach to a new kind of settlement analysis
HSRC’S APPROACH:
SETTLEMENT TYPOLOGY
IPDM’s housing demand profiler provides a new type of
evidence-based settlement typology –
• It clarifies the kinds of demographic population found in the different
types of:
 Shack areas
 Rental accommodations
 Formal housing types
 Government subsidy housing schemes
• And so on – more than 40 categories of self-built and formally delivered
housing have been identified –
• Each has a different demographic profile that determines demand for
housing and services
If we unpack these, demand can be estimated locally and
also provincially to make the right housing match
USING SETTLEMENT TYPES
TO CREATE DEMAND PROFILES
To attach the demand profiles to the settlement
types
 We bring the key types into focus from the ground up, starting with
qualitative work and going on to the large questionnaire survey
 IPDM’s survey dataset covers roughly 3000 cases in Gauteng,
Mpumalanga and Sekhukhune
Each settlement type has its own population structure
 For instance: shack housing can include informal site-rental,
shack rental and ownership among other options: it can be infill or
free-standing, central or peripheral
All the types have different demographics and income levels –
 Knowing household size and structure gives range estimates of
housing demand per type
WHY A NEED FOR
DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILES?
Why is this important for municipalities and for national?
 The kind of subsidy housing being delivered often fits the
need of the delivery agency, not of the community –
 N2 Gateway? Cape Town put in rental housing not well
matched to the demographic
Delivering the wrong housing type can result in the
houses being sold right away –
• On the informal market, at prices well below delivery cost
• This kind of instability undermines subsidies to the
poor – subsidized housing goes to the well off
HSRC’s housing demand estimates are available now for the
survey area –
 The settlement typology wall charts in IPDM’s Toolkit for
Integrated Planning are online at http://tip.csir.co.za
POVERTY-LINKED SETTLEMENT
TYPES, MPUMALANGA CHART
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Old traditional homesteads
New traditional homesteads
Rural modern village
Self-development
Formal urban townships
Formal rural townships
PHP subsidized housing
Informal, central or infill
Informal, periph or rural
Upgraded informal
RDP subsidy housing
Backyard shacks
Old hostels
Upgraded hostels
15. Urban flats
16. Cluster housing
17. Other urban
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Guide charts give by district and
settlement type:
Number units needed (range
estimate)
Type units needed
Household size
% female head
Potential h/hold size to rise
% out of work
Average h/hold income
HOUSING DEMAND GUIDE CHART
EXAMPLE, NORTHERN MPUMALANGA
Settlement
type
Avg
H/H
size
%
Potential
female for rise
head
in H/H
size once
settled*
%
adult
popn
out of
work*
Avge
H/H
inc,
R/ m
Number
dwelling
units
needed
(range )
Old traditional
Older type
homesteads
6.2
48
VERY
HIGH
49
1718 24 000-
Self-developmt
Modern housing
on informal land
4.8
39
HIGH
58
1341 13 500 –
Formal tnshps
Serviced hses
on indv plots
4.7
51
MED
44
2852 5000-
Informl periph
Shacks periph/
as rural densn
4.5
58
HIGH
43
1710 3200-
26 000
14 500
(services)
7000
3600
Housing
options +
linked
needs
Larger singlefamily owned
unit, med dens,
suburban locn
Delivers own
housing + land
needs muncpl
services
Single-family
owned units,
higher density,
suburban locn
Rentl + singlefamily serviced
units, high
dens, central
2: SPECIFIC FINDINGS, 1
IPDM findings help to validate the present direction of
housing policy: the survey data shows
1. Poverty-relevant housing stock increasing rapidly
everywhere
2. Self-build housing of decent quality spreading fast in
the rural sector
•
•
•
•
Government subsidy housing delivery has been very successful:
•
10% of all urban and rural housing surveyed
Informal self-development areas, modern-type decent-quality
housing developments equivalent to RDP, but built by the poor on
informal land:
•
8% of all housing surveyed
Decent-quality owner-built housing stock in South Africa’s poor
communities appears in other settlement types too:
•
Self-build good-quality housing = 35% of housing overall
Municipalities are reported to be providing services rapidly
SPECIFIC FINDINGS, 2
SA’s poor are steadily building up assets and
moving into the housing market:
•
Slum areas of shack-type housing:
• 21% only – far fewer than the good-quality owner-built dwellings
•
Traditional rural settlement areas:
• 12% – but traditional settlement appears to be disappearing fast - families
are turning to brick housing
• This trend will transform the rural areas and start this group moving to town
•
The old townships:
• 27%, the largest single settlement type – 12% are self-built
•
Rural villages with non-traditional housing :
•
21% now – village families are very poor but 70%+ now have decent-quality
self-built dwellings
 Estimated replacement value, self-build housing:
•
R 10 000-R 25 000 per unit, urban areas often R 50 000+
A community with 1000 self-build units has housing assets
worth R 10-25 million on the informal market
• 1000 shacks’ market value would be R 1.2-R 2.5 million
FINDINGS: IMPLICATIONS
Important implications include:
1. Subsidy housing delivery seems to have raised housing
aspirations among the poor
 And sparked a cascading expansion of good self-build housing
stock
2. Household-level capital formation through housing assets is
reported on a large scale in poverty communities
 This trend validates government’s anti-poverty strategy
3. Investment in family housing appears to be rapidly replacing
traditional savings in livestock
 Poor rural communities are engaging with the cash economy
4. Self-build decent-quality housing concentrates in areas with less
subsidy housing and in outlying areas relying on social grants
for survival –
 It looks as if some income from social grants is going to
family housing investment and capital formation
Favourable trends are unfolding now – but with risks
OPTIONS IN CONTEXT
HSRC’s IPDM findings point to entry to the developed
economy via support to self-build good-quality housing –
But the self-help housing trend may be double-edged:
NSDP policy points to risks for families self-investing in areas with low economic
potential –
• Rural housing markets offer cheap land fast – but are not always
liquid
• Investment in outlying areas may tie families into a collapsing rural
land economy
• Risk of grant dependency, costly transport and poor access to
jobs?
Against these risks –
Many rural and peri-urban families seem to be voting with
their bricks for living outside the cities
•
A significant part of the rural population is resisting pressures to locate in
urban areas
The most popular self-chosen areas for owner-built
good housing are now in the metro peripheries
RECOMMENDATIONS
In this light, recommendations include:
1. Build on the developmental momentum of subsidy housing delivery
2. Work with informal land delivery in the settlement types where this
can happen without extreme density risks
3. Support self-build options:
• Increase South Africa’s stock of good quality housing
• Accelerate household capital formation for accumulation and
market engagement
4. Consider suburban-type peripheral development with mass
transit:
• Work on options for the outlying areas that now produce decent
self-build housing –
• These are still excluded by distance factors from economic
participation – so:
5. Look closely at transport costs – reduce the spatial-distance
penalty for peripheral and rural owner-built good housing
SA cannot bring all its poor into the core cities – land is expensive, the
cities resist, and many poor families don’t want to live there
THANK YOU!
HSRC
20 October 2008