“Our primary challenge in contemporary Johannesburg is how to boost delivery and at the same time achieve better quality living environments, sustainable human settlements, integrated settlements, quality neighbourhoods, better quality houses. Also we need to find how to deliver housing that will be identified, or at least recognised, by the owners as an asset; and also not just by the owners but by the industry so that a person who owns a house can use that house to participate in the economy of this country. This challenge has been addressed in the context of a high incidence of poverty, high levels of inequality, and rapidly rising building and land costs.”
“A house is not just a house; it is far more. A house involves land issues, involves water issues, involves electricity issues, it involves a whole range of things that have to come together but every single one of these things is a separate department in the city, we have an electricity department, we have a water department. So unless you can actually bring all those different actors together as a single team you will never provide a fully serviced urban environment. What will happen, as has happened to us in the past, is we build a house with dirt roads, no electricity, no water, eventually the water department arrives. A couple of years down the line they have electricity on their budget so we really have to look at how we structure the city institutions as regards to how we deliver housing.”
