SA Affordable Housing September / October 2017 // Issue: 66 | Page 18

EVENTS
Continued from page 14.
housing. These include linking local governments and
financial markets to address capacity development;
supporting financing options for housing infrastructure
provision involving the local financial sector; and
discussing the underlying risks and opportunities of sub-
sovereign lending and its impact on how to develop
suitable products and business models.
The last speaker of the day was Cass Coovadia, MD of
The Banking Association South Africa, who spoke about
how it’s time for a game change for social and affordable
housing in Africa. He said to address this we must focus on
current policy debates on how to best regenerate public
housing projects; we must enhance community
participation and empowerment in the delivery of housing
and informal settlement upgrades; improve low cost
housing by involving those communities; and manage
housing development without government subsidies.
"We cannot sustain the matter in
which we provide housing in South
Africa currently. We need to go from
just building houses to providing
sustainable human settlements."
OFF TO SITE
After the stream discussions, delegates were treated to a
site visit to Greenville Garden City which will provide
4 000 low-cost housing opportunities in phases. The
project is undertaken in partnership with the City of Cape
Town, Western Cape Provincial Government and Garden
Cities that are funding the infrastructure and top-structure
money for the project. The project is an integrated housing
project with breaking new ground (BNG), GAP and bonded
houses. Currently Phase 2 has 507 sites. The project uses
ABTs and a Bo-Kaap aesthetic for these homes that are
built in rows which comprise clusters of two and
three units.
From left: Anthea Houston, Andrew Chimphondah and Olivier Vidal.
CLOSING THE CONFERENCE WITH A BANG
The third day featured a design thinking exclusive
workshop for housing developers, hosted by Robert
Bloom, managing partner of DesignThinkers Group SA. The
workshop aimed to assist developers to understand how
homeowners use the real estate space. This human-centric
user approach assists them in developing homes that will
delight their customers and ultimately sell well. In
addition, it helps developers achieve goals like building a
cohesive community from the residents’ perspective.
Four sessions were held with one that focused on the
empathy-inspiration-ideation-prototyping-
implementation approach or (in other words) embracing an
innovation mindset augmented with the relevant skill set.
It provided a dynamic mix of short instructional lectures,
demonstrations and guided hands-on teamwork.
Session two involved stakeholder mapping, which he
described as the next step, and is all about establishing a
‘stakeholder map’ to identify roles assumed by
participants. Session three revolved around empathy
where team members from session two interviewed and
observed users in the field to understand their pain-points
and find out what delights them.
The fourth session involved participants re-grouping to
provide ideas and prototypes, to test and retest and to
develop fresh, innovative solutions and convert users’
pain-points into delight.
The day concluded with an open discussion on the
issues raised and lessons learnt.
16
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2017
AFFORDABLE
SA HOUSING
Councillor Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee Member of
Transport and Urban Development Authority (TDA).
The room of delegates.