SOWETAN | State fails people over housing

Local government is rightly viewed as the coalface where government interacts with the governed and where  the failures of those with power to change lives are felt the most.

It is local government people have to call upon, for instance, to fix that pothole in their street growing bigger by the day. It is to local government that we pay direct taxation in the form of rates to enable the state to deliver some of the basic needs of the citizenry.

There are countless examples in the news of  the failures of the state to carry out its end of the contract it has with the people and none are as stark as the failings of municipalities to deliver services. Hardly a day passes without protests where people lament being let down by those mandated to deliver services.

This week this publication told the story 13 years in the making of the unexplained failure of the City of Johannesburg to finish off a housing project. Lehae project was launched in 2010 to build approximately 5,147 houses for people who qualified for state housing. It would be amiss to disregard the fact that the first phase of the project went relatively smoothly with just over 3,000 housing units completed and handed over to beneficiaries.

The project hit a snag in the second phase meant to deliver 2,023 units when the City of Joburg ran out of funds and hundreds of houses were left incomplete. It is a situation that led to the auditor-general asking questions as to why that was the case and yet there are still no answers today. We also reported that the city will still need to fix structural defects of the completed houses, meaning there was failure to enforce norms and standards during construction.

Houses also stood empty, inviting hoodlums to take cover in them to run their criminal activities.

It also led to some people meant to be beneficiaries of the housing scheme losing patience and taking unauthorised occupation of the buildings, some of which they said had been vandalised and stripped of fittings.

Families that illegally took occupation of the houses told Sowetan they spent money to finish off the houses to make them livable. Now they stand to lose their investments as the city is talking of evicting them

It all points to the need to involve the community in such matters rather than the top-down approach seemingly employed here. Why, for instance, would houses be standing empty for years while there's such a dire need for housing?

Until we take local government seriously to task such problems as seen in Lehae will remain commonplace.