SA Affordable Housing May - June 2020 // ISSUE: 82 | Page 21

PROFILE
STAG is in the process of funding the development of student
housing all over Africa, including 34 000 beds at universities
in Kenya, 4 700 in Malawi, 5 400 in Zambia and 3 000 in
Lesotho. The company’s developments are premised on the
principle that university residences are social communities,
and that their design can advance or detract from academic
and societal goals.
A report was published in 2013 estimating that South
African universities have a shortage of beds of 300 000, which
Schooling reckons has probably since grown to 320 000 at a
total cost of R96-billion at current cost-per-bed ratios. There
are a million university students in the country, and with
many of them being in rural areas they have no adequate
alternative accommodation. This suggests 40-50% of them
require subsidised accommodation. It may not be as evident
a problem in big centres such as Johannesburg, but in rural
universities like Fort Hare there simply is no alternative, and
Schooling says there are cases where as many as 20 students
occupy a single room/unit, or sometimes they live 20km away
in a shack or RDP house. This affects their ability to study and
pass exams. “It is not conducive to student success,” he says.
FUNDING MECHANISMS
Government budgets R4-billion/year for new student
housing, with the Development Bank of Southern Africa
(DBSA) allocating a further R4-billion/year, which will require
ten to 15 years to catch up just on the current situation.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is
a South African government student financial aid scheme
which provides financial aid to poor undergraduate students
to help pay for the cost of their tertiary education after
finishing high school, and it contributes R36 000/year to
student accommodation. However, accommodation built
according to today’s standards and norms comes in at about
R55 000/year, says Schooling: so NSFAS covers about half,
while the university can borrow the other half from the DBSA.
Much of STAG’s business is in the rest of Africa, and while
the above model applies in South Africa, STAG obtains
humanitarian funding elsewhere where students can barely
cover the running costs of their accommodation, never mind
a rent which contributes towards the capital cost. STAG
has done a rule-of-thumb calculation putting the need for
student accommodation in Africa at five million beds at a
cost of USD150-billion.
Ordinary affordable accommodation is already available in
South Africa at a monthly rental of about R3 600, but Schooling
points out that this is for buildings bought cheaply and
converted, which then has the problem of not being located
near to campus or meeting the Department of Higher Education
(DHE)’s minimum specifications. Student accommodation is a
lot more expensive than ordinary affordable accommodation,
for various reasons, but primarily because an RDP home is just
a shell with no finishes and the homeowner gradually installs
them. Student accommodation is short-term in nature and
consequently has to come with finishes, as specified by the DHE.
“Those specifications are world standards and come at a
construction cost of R15 000m 2 which is in fact unaffordable.
That is a construction cost of R300 000, and our goal is to
reduce it to between R150 000 and R180 000. The way we
are doing so twofold: by optimal architectural design by
developing a green affordable alternative to world-class
design; and innovation in building materials. I visited student
accommodation throughout the world to determine what
‘world class’ means, and came across an organisation called
ACUHO-I (Association of College and University Housing
Officers – International), and its principles were adopted by
STAG. We have come up with a model which is deemed by the
American universities and by ACUHO-I to be world-class.
The 2 047-bed student village at the University of Fort Hare.
www.saaffordablehousing.co.za MAY - JUNE 2020 19