Government contribution to housing delivery challenges in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality: An exploration

Abstract

Background: This article examines the government’s contribution to housing delivery challenges encountered in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM).Aim: It acknowledges housing shortage, unavailability of land, housing distribution, population growth, corruption, unaffordability and poverty as causes of housing delivery challenges; explores government’s contribution to housing delivery challenges in EMM; and seeks to demonstrate government as a key contributory factor in housing delivery.Setting: The study was conducted in the EMM region.Methods: The study is exploratory in nature and used qualitative methodology.Results: Key findings suggest that the government is the dominant cause of the challenges, largely through promises of free housing, economic policies and housing policies that are not conducive to directly tackle existing housing challenges. The findings also suggest that the government plays a major contributory role in each of the causes and that the resolution of the crisis in housing delivery has profound implications for future political stability in the urban areas – EMM to be specific.Conclusion: The article recommends that there should be a stronger and more concentrated focus on the process of allocation of housing and that the government must play the major role of formulating an effective, and workable coherent housing policy which would trickle further down to municipal levels through provincial and local governments, and having the municipalities adopt targets attached to them as key performance areas on which they would be measured and held accountable.