IN THE SPOTLIGHT: REVISED WHITE PAPER ON HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: REVISED WHITE PAPER ON HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

• 31 January 2025
• In the Spotlight
• SA Legal Academy

The revised White Paper on Human Settlements has been gazetted, following a public consultation process begun in January 2024 – as SA Legal Academy reported at the time.

Focusing on society’s poor, vulnerable and ‘missing middle’ housing imperatives, the new policy is ‘anchored’ in government’s ongoing commitment to the development of sustainable integrated human settlements. Central to this is ‘a spatial assertion premised on the integration of four key elements’. According to Human Settlements Minister Thembisile Simelane’s foreword to the paper, these are

• infrastructure, services, and housing
• land use patterns
• operational and governance relations, and
• socio-economic patterns.

Against that backdrop, the White Paper is underpinned by ‘several policy shifts’. These include the prioritisation of:

• ‘participatory and incremental informal settlement upgrading … in-situ wherever possible’ (informed by the development of ‘optimal’ institutional, technical, planning, tenure and procedural mechanisms)
• ‘the upgrading of temporary relocation areas that can no longer be deemed to be temporary’ (including the innovative redevelopment, and where appropriate, densification of apartheid-era hostels and inner city occupied buildings)
• facilitating the creation of conditions to enable housing self-provisioning by low-income households (including ‘managed land settlement’ and ‘the release of serviced stands/land in locations that tie households into the economy’, and
• interventions to promote the creation of thriving ‘non-exploitative and fairly regulated’ rental and subsidised social housing sectors.

The executive summary also refers to:

• the establishment of a multilateral ‘national stakeholder forum’ with the intention of facilitating collaboration and the ‘co-production’ of human settlement initiatives
• a review of the housing code so that it encompasses ‘new approaches, strategies and programmes’ appropriate to the delivery of integrated and sustainable human settlements.

The White Paper’s publication comes just a few days after the Housing Consumer Protection Act joined the statute books, although the new piece of legislation is not yet in force. While provision is made for the Act’s phased commencement, once fully operationalised it is expected to:

• ensure that the home building industry is more the more effectively regulated, and
• prevent the delivery and proliferation of sub-standard housing.

The Act will apply to subsidised housing projects, homeowner builders, repair work, renovations, alterations and extensions to an existing home.

• White Paper
• Housing Consumer Protection Act

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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