SA Affordable Housing March / April 2018 // Issue: 69 | Page 26

FEATURES
One of the bad buildings in Doornfontein that is illegally occupied.
Looking at ‘bad’ buildings:
Part 1
Bad buildings (aka illegally occupied buildings) have come under
scrutiny recently; while we face a critical housing backlog these
buildings may help in tackling the housing deficit.
By Ntsako Khosa | Photos by Hariwe Johnson
T
he City of Johannesburg (COJ) has a dedicated unit
that deals specifically with property hijacking
investigations, called the ‘property hijacking
investigation unit’, it falls within Group Forensic and
Investigation Service (GFIS) headed by previous Hawks
head, Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya.
Head of the property hijacking investigation unit,
Victoria Rammala, says that the GFIS was created in 2016
by the executive mayor of the City of Johannesburg as part
of fighting fraud and corruption.
The unit is the integral part of Inner City Revitalisation
Programme. Property hijacking is the Mayoral and the
City’s Legacy Project to rehabilitate bad buildings through
their release to the private sector for conversion into low-
cost housing and small, medium and micro-enterprises
(SMME) opportunities.
“We have released about 13 properties since October
last year, at present, the Mayor has asked for a further 20
buildings to be released,” Rammala says. According to the
City, some of the released properties are currently being
evaluated by prospective developers for redevelopment.
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MARCH - APRIL 2018
AFFORDABLE
SA HOUSING
WHAT IS A ‘BAD’ BUILDING?
Bad buildings are commonly defined as properties taken
over by citizens from absentee owners, sometimes even
from present owners. There are many dynamics involved in
a building that is termed ‘bad’. Rammala says that these are
buildings that are derelict and unsafe owing to neglect and
non-compliance of by-laws and relevant legislation.
“There are those buildings that we call hijacked
buildings, we classify them as problem properties,” she
says. Reasons behind the classification is that it covers the
multitude of aspects that occur in such buildings, such as
crime, non-payment of revenue, illegal connection of
electricity and water, and so on.
In 2014, it was reported that bad buildings cost the
government an estimated R8-billion. Rammala explains
that a building is only hijacked (and called such) once the
tenants start paying rent (unbeknown to them) to someone
who isn’t the rightful owner.
“We have the hijacking component which has criminality
component to it. There are syndicates involved, in certain
instances within the City, where you find properties are