ACCESS to decent and affordable housing for middle-income households is an unending headache for Gauteng, local government and housing MEC Humphrey Mmemezi says.
To address the problem - which extended beyond the government's resources - of accessing funds for affordable housing, the promotion of vibrant and effective partnerships with banks was urgently needed.
Mmemezi called on the Gauteng Partnership Fund (GPF) to take the lead in helping households with a combined income of R15000 to access decent homes at affordable rates.
The GPF, an agency of the department, was established in 2002 with a mandate to design "innovative funding structures that would enable sustainable involvement of the private sector in the funding of social and rental housing in Gauteng. Mmemezi said: "The households with monthly incomes that fall below R15000 are the group most affected, and who end up renting. We have long identified funding as an issue needing to be addressed as part of the whole bouquet of interventions, in the realisation of the provincial sustainable human settlements objective.
"To this end we sought to involve private funding institutions with the realisation that state resources alone could not even start to make a sustainable impact."
He said the department's objective was also to provide close to 20000 rental housing stock by 2014. He said the target was ambitious, but with the kind of partnerships the GPF was fostering the goal was achievable.
GPF chief executive Kutoane Kutoane said: "GPF has been a key player in the facilitation of affordable housing developments and we have focused our programmes on mobilisation of private sector funding".
Affordable housing help
ACCESS to decent and affordable housing for middle-income households is an unending headache for Gauteng, local government and housing MEC Humphrey Mmemezi says.
To address the problem - which extended beyond the government's resources - of accessing funds for affordable housing, the promotion of vibrant and effective partnerships with banks was urgently needed.
Mmemezi called on the Gauteng Partnership Fund (GPF) to take the lead in helping households with a combined income of R15000 to access decent homes at affordable rates.
The GPF, an agency of the department, was established in 2002 with a mandate to design "innovative funding structures that would enable sustainable involvement of the private sector in the funding of social and rental housing in Gauteng. Mmemezi said: "The households with monthly incomes that fall below R15000 are the group most affected, and who end up renting. We have long identified funding as an issue needing to be addressed as part of the whole bouquet of interventions, in the realisation of the provincial sustainable human settlements objective.
"To this end we sought to involve private funding institutions with the realisation that state resources alone could not even start to make a sustainable impact."
He said the department's objective was also to provide close to 20000 rental housing stock by 2014. He said the target was ambitious, but with the kind of partnerships the GPF was fostering the goal was achievable.
GPF chief executive Kutoane Kutoane said: "GPF has been a key player in the facilitation of affordable housing developments and we have focused our programmes on mobilisation of private sector funding".
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