Government housing: MEC reveals revised criteria for eligibility

Provincial Minister of Human Settlements, Tertuis Simmers, celebrates 100 days in office on Tuesday and pledges to accelerate social housing development; quality service delivery, including municipal and stakeholder engagements.

Human Settlements continues to focus on quality service delivery

“These engagements made me realise that we would have to adopt a radical approach in how we deal with human settlements. Particularly if we are to accelerate human settlement delivery, and promote social inclusion through the development of integrated, resilient and sustainable human settlements in an open society.”

Minister of Human Settlements, Tertuis Simmers

The minister has introduced three radical drivers his office will focus on:

• Radical Acceleration of Housing Opportunities,
• Radical Implementation of Innovative Solutions and,
• An Integrated Approach to Human Settlements.

Through the implementation of these drivers, Simmers stipulates it will bring an acceleration into social housing developments, and the ownership of homes through title deeds provided by Human Settlements.

Housing allocation will start with senior citizens

The minister further declares that these initiatives only rectify past injustices towards local communities, as his department has handed over 383 title deeds and 238 houses during his time in office.

There are many housing development projects inside and outside the city, and Human Settlements is committed to ensuring quality service delivery; with a key focus of funding pivotal areas. Affordable housing is a priority, alongside Finance Linked Individual Subsidy Programme (FLISP); which provides housing subsidies to qualifying residents.

In order of priority, the most deserving people will be categorised and added into the free Breaking New Ground (BNG) houses, and resources will be injected to upgrading informal settlements ensuring the provision of basic needs.

The most deserving people category goes by the order of priority including:

• Senior citizens,
• People with disabilities,
• Child-headed households,
• Those who have been on the waiting list for 15 years or longer,
• Backyard dwellers, particularly single mothers with dependents.

Registration Weekends will allow citizens to update their details on waiting lists

In June, the department issued an executive directive for all municipalities to prioritise backyard dwellers, and an upcoming Bredasdorp housing development project yields 158 housing opportunities where residents can officially walk into their new homes in December 2019.

During October and November; Registration Weekends will be established, where each municipality goes out and verifies their details on waiting list databases. Between the 14 and 15 of September, a pilot of Registration Weekends will be rolled out in George, and citizens are urged to update their details and register if need be.

The department is designing an app for citizens to access housing information

Human Settlements is in the process of developing an app for citizens to instantly access information on government housing assistance, the department requested young people to help by designing mock-ups and prototypes of this app.

Simmers notes that 20 entries met the criteria and were impressive, ten were designed by females, while six are from rural communities. The department will assess the functionality of these apps and a winner will be announced.