Insecurity of tenure among street homeless and poorly housed people in Johannesburg: Some Planning Responses

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ABSTRACT

This paper examines the insecurity of tenure among street homeless and poorly housed people using case studies from Johannesburg. The paper also examines the various planning responses to address the insecurity of tenure among the homeless and poorly housed people.

Broadly this paper seeks to highlight some of the experiences of the street homeless (inner city of Johannesburg) and people living in informal settlements (Weiler's Farm and Thembelihle, South of Jonannesburg) as case studies. Weilers Farm is an upgrading project while Thembelihle is a relocation project because 40% of the people are living on dolomite.

Street homeless people are generally insecure all aspects of their lives. With regard to their housing situation, the feeling or experience of insecurity is even more pronounced when they move from one location to the other (street homeless people are highly mobile or street homelessness is transitory in nature) because of constant harassment by the "committee members" who are street homeless themselves, crime or by natural forces of rain or winter. For those poorly housed, the insecurity has to with first the type of materials used to put up the shelter, crime, violence and illegality that has to do with the land invasion and the fear of eviction or relocation/displacement.

Planning has responded to these situations through the Development Facilitation (DFA) Act of 1995, which has as part of its sub-principles the promotion of secure tenure and discouraging illegal occupation of land. The DFA forms the foundation for the new, normative based planning system for the country. It has two fundamental principles of:

Providing a better planning system and,
Integration of development planning.

The final part of the paper would highlight the extent to which some of the planning responses have failed or succeeded based on the case studies and suggests way forward.

ESF/N-AERUS: International workshop - Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001

N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net