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Housing the poor in rich areas

Michael Sakuneka

Michael Sakuneka

Limpopo's Greater Tzaneen municipality has started building 130 houses for low- and middleincome earners in Flora Park.

This housing development will change the face of the Tzaneen suburb, where mostly highincome earners live.

The housing project will benefit low- and middle-income earners from previously disadvantaged communities who wanted to live in the suburbs but could not because homes there were too expensive.

The project forms part of an integrated human settlement, where the poor and the rich will live together.

Tzaneen is the second town in Limpopo, after Polokawne, to introduce this kind of settlement.

The first settlement was officially launched by Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisuluearlier this year in Polokwane, where hundreds of low- and middle-income houses are being built in the up-market suburb of Bendor.

Greater Tzaneen municipality head of housing and administration Handswell Phakula said yesterday that 60percent of the houses would be built by a private company and 40percent by the municipality in a public-private partnership.

Phakula said the housing project would help ease the housing backlog in Tzaneen.

"This is one of the projects that we hope will help us deal with the housing backlog in the municipality," Phakula said.

He said that high-income earners would also be catered for and that this initiative was just the beginning. He said the municipality would build 1000 similar houses later in the year.

According to Maletsana Margaret Mangena, the project developer in Flora Park, the multi-million project will be completed soon. But Mangena would not say how much the total cost of the project would be.

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