We start off by indicating that this is a product of a great deal of research, interviews and consultations of various stakeholders, that has taken on board several Imbizos to five provinces, MINMEC inputs, presentations to FOSAD, a workshop that brought in several Departments, extensive discussions with Treasury officials and individual Ministers with whom we hope to have integrated delivery.

Cabinet approved on 1 September this ground breaking Housing Plan for the development of human settlements in the next five years. Facets of the Plan which introduce a new trajectory for housing delivery in South Africa are the following:

Premised on the concept of human settlements the Plan provides a framework for the integration and the building of homes in healthy and secure living environments where everyone will have access to the services and goods produced by society. It provides for the provision of a total package of infrastructure such as clinics, schools, police stations, community facilities and clinics within the vicinity of actually built homes, in facilitation of good governance.

The Plan collapses the subsidy system and creates a three tier category of income groups for better targeting. In the categorization, the hard core poor (income levels 0 - R1,500) receive the full housing subsidy of R28,000. The poor (income levels R1, 500 - R3, 500) receive too the full subsidy. A new subsidy band is created for affordable housing targeting the middle income level (those earning R3, 500 to R 7,000 pm), for whom government pays a deposit.

The reach of housing policy is broadened to cover the entire residential property market.

The Plan’s necessity stems from the fact that at its inception the Housing Policy and Strategy (1994) focused on stabilizing the environment to transform the extremely fragmented, complex and racially-based financial and institutional framework that was inherited from the previous government, whilst simultaneously establishing new systems to ensure delivery to address the housing backlog. Therefore, whilst government believes that the fundamentals of the policy remain relevant and sound, a new plan was required to redirect and enhance existing mechanisms to move towards a more responsive and effective delivery.

For each sector of society the Plan delivers certain and new benefits which are the following:

• All South Africans will have an opportunity to access homes in well designed, serviced and located human settlements. For the first-time buyers we will have normalised the market and created the necessary facilitation with the banks. They also will have choice. The hard-core poor; i.e. pensioners and the indigent, will access a rental home with no savings requirement.
• Subsidy beneficiaries will get increased access to credit and a choice of ownership options and top structures;
• Rental accommodation seekers receive access to innovative rental options in secure environments;
• Informal settlement inhabitants receive certainty as well as access to proper services, security, choice and formal top structures;
• The financial sector gets the government’s commitment to a partnership, an enabling environment including incentives to lend to poor households;
• The construction sector too receives the government’s commitment to a partnership, an enabling environment including incentives to participate actively in housing delivery to the poorest of the poor.
• The possibilities of employment and the creation of skills will be created.
• Government will achieve the integration of society.
• For the media, we will have to come back to this one at the end.

The instruments through which all of these benefits will be achieved are as follows:

• Housing delivery will be driven by demand and will involve a great deal of flexibility.
• The role of the private sector will be enhanced through the collapsing of the subsidy bands as well as the removal of blockages relating to down-payments for the indigent and pensioners, assessing beneficiaries on spousal income, developing fixed rate and other new loan products including an option to convert the capital grant, where linked to a home ownership or rental, into an annuity based grant or benefit.
• Employer groups will be encouraged to make their contribution through employer-assisted housing.
• Barriers to housing trade will be removed through amendments to the Housing Act, 1997, to reduce the period during which resale on the private market is prohibited from 8 years to 5 years.
• Enhancing access to title by implementing a range of measures to stimulate a renewed uptake in the Discount Benefit Scheme and establish a high priority focus to complete the registration of transfer in respect of houses constructed under the existing housing programme.
• All programmes will be focused on ring-fencing informal settlements and replacing these with more adequate forms of housing.

In addition to these new plans, greater co-ordination will be effected between ourselves as national government, provincial and local government. Greater co-ordination will also be made between the Departments which form the Social Sector such as Provincial and Local Government, Agriculture and Land Affairs, Transport, Water Affairs and Forestry, and Minerals and Energy Affairs. An Inter-Ministerial Committee is being established in this regard to oversee the implementation of the Housing Plan.

The national department will be reviewed to ensure that it is adequately staffed and appropriately skilled to implement the Plan and the mandates of the housing institutions evaluated and reviewed to ensure adequate support.

Other initiatives in the Plan include land acquisition through pro-active identification and acquisition of land via the Public Works Asset Register, State Land Register and Environmental Potential Atlas.

The Plan targets inner city regeneration and densification with a number of programmes including rental and rent to own.

It enhances access to title by implementing a range of measures and establish a high priority focus to complete the registration of transfer in respect of houses constructed under the existing housing programme.

It establishes a Special Investigative Unit to attend to the reported cases of corruption at levels. Consideration is also being given to ensure that this unit is highly mobile, well resourced and is able to act speedily to bring those guilty to book.

It provides for a comprehensive housing sector evaluation, monitoring, and reporting system based on key performance indicators, of all housing programmes and institutions and to align the programmes and institutions according to the plan to ensure maximum returns on government’s investment and sustainability of that investment.

It also provides for a Monitoring & Audit Unit that will be created to undertake a detail analysis of monies allocated to projects against units completed & titles transferred. In addition, consideration is been given to the establishment of a Management Information System (MIS) that will be able to create an audit trail of housing monies expended at all levels of government on a project by project basis against deeds of transfer or rental contracts.

Let me indicate, lastly, that for the media the Plan gives members of the institution the rare opportunity of building a house for someone. The satisfaction they will get out of this is greater than any intoxicant!

The effective implementation date of the Plan is April 2005.