SA Affordable Housing September - October 2019 // ISSUE: 78 | Page 4

EDITOR'S NOTE No housing without infrastructure SAAffordHousing di SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 2 T his is my first issue of SA Affordable Housing, and it is a great honour to be in the hot seat of this exciting magazine. I was previously editor of two other magazines in the IMD stable: Civil Engineering Contractor and Quarry SA, both of which were heavily focused on infrastructure. Given this background, you’ll forgive me if I start with a view of affordable housing from the perspective of infrastructure. Speaking at a presentation of the Montrose City mixed suburban township development in Randfontein (which is the featured project in this issue), MEC for COGTA and Human Settlements, Dikgang Moiloa, offered an interesting potential solution to the dearth of infrastructure spending, albeit while ruffling a few feathers. “Within three years we won’t be able to build any more houses,” he claims, “because there won’t be any infrastructure for them. There’s no point building homes where there’s no water, sanitation or electricity,” says Moiloa. His proposal was to cut the housing budget by 30% – given there would be no point in building houses anyway – and divert that amount to building infrastructure, which would give a new lease on life to the building of affordable housing. The government has once again stated its ambition to address the country’s housing crisis. This degree of attention has now propelled affordable housing towards the top of the political agenda. This is an encouraging development, but it is important to bear in mind that building homes is an integral part of a far more complex picture. Many questions remain on infrastructure if we are to truly tackle the housing crisis. The government has a backlog of two million three hundred thousand (2 356 025), according to the Budget Vote speech by Lindiwe Sisulu, Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation. With an ever-increasing number of developments in the pipeline up and down the country, developers, local communities and local authorities need to come together to meet the challenges that will arise, particularly on issues ranging from water provision to transport to energy and social infrastructure. Montrose City is one of more than 30 mega cities being built countrywide – according to Moiloa – as a sustainable long-term development of new post-apartheid cities that are intrinsically linked to one another spatially, socially and economically. The programme will grind to a halt unless money is first spent on enabling infrastructure. It was announced at the Montrose launch that there was sufficient infrastructure only for the first 1 096 houses, which had already been built and were almost ready to be handed over to residents, as well as the next 782 which were to be completed by November/December. to r For a journalist, interviews are of critical importance. Writing for a trade publication like SA Affordable Housing is real journalism in an age of content snippets. That’s why taking on the challenge of SA Affordable Housing requires input from readers. My goal is to initially maintain the standard of this publication while I learn the ropes, and later to see if it cannot be somewhat refreshed. Each business owner out there is well-aware of the need to continually refresh their business, keep up with the times and technology, and keep interest alive while never deviating from the brand and core values. SA Affordable Housing keeps its collective ear close to the ground. We encourage contributions from industry experts and from readers: any contractor, engineer or other reader with a viewpoint (subject to our content rules) is welcome to contact me to be interviewed or to contribute to any of our regular features. You can reach me at [email protected]. Bear in mind we verify everything we publish, so no wacky conspiracy theories will be published – only the certifiable truth. Eamonn saaffordablehousingmag SA Affordable Housing www.saaffordablehousing.co.za