Report on Delivery to Women

4. HOUSING:

Internal Achievements

• The Department has an official policy on the acceleration of the equality between men and women.
• The Minister is a woman.
• The Director-General is a woman.
• Women hold 40% of the middle management positions.
• The Department provides crèche facilities for staff.
• The Department has established a Reference Group for Women’s Roles and Access to Housing. It serves as a think-tank and advises the Ministry and the Department on women and related issues in housing delivery.
• Gender Sensitization workshops for managers ahve been conducted.
• There is a draft Sexual Harassment Policy
• A presentation on South Africa’s National Policy Framework for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality has been held
• The Department provides lifeskills education for employees’ children (SADC Declaration on Violence Against Women, Children, Elderly and People with Disabilities

Achievements For South African Women

Policies and Legislation

• The White Paper on Housing creates an enabling environment for the poor and homeless, particularly women, to access housing opportunities.
• The Housing Act of 1997 promotes the active participation of women in housing and creates opportunities for women to participate in the industry by granting them bridging finance.
• The Prevention of Legal Occupation of Land Act of 1998 lays down mechanisms for resolving conflicts between illegal occupiers of land and landowners. Most illegal occupiers are women. The law promotes negotiation as a tool for dispute resolution.
• The Housing Consumer Protection measures Act of 1998 protects consumers against fly-by-night contractors who build poorly constructed houses.
• The Rent Bill will promote healthy relationships between tenants and landlords and creates a rent tribunal to solve disputes.
• The Housing Matters Amendment Bill phases out housing subsidies that would have rendered beneficiaries, most of them women, destitute.
• The Housing Consumer Protection Amendment Bill closes loopholes in the Act.
• The Reference Group has released a three-year plan that examined gender inequities affecting women’s access to housing. It seeks to refine the terms of reference as well as develop a set of principles and practices relating to women’s housing issues.

Programmes and Activities

• One of the aims of the National Housing programme is the provision of security of tenure. Previously, the lack of security of tenure for women especially, resulted in them being discriminated against and victimized. Provincial Housing Departments in their administration of the Housing Subsidy Programme are committed to ensuring that title deeds for housing be registered in the name of the applicant and spouse or partner. This practice will ensure that the female partner is protected in terms of her rights and access to housing.
• The Supporting the People’s Housing Process (PHP) gives consumers who want to build their own houses subsidies and technical support to ensure that the structures are properly built and do not pose any danger to the people who live in them. Most of the respondents in the PHP are women. The Peoples Housing process recognizes the role that women, especially black women have played and continue to play in building and maintaining their housing and developing their communities.
• The majority of the community institutions that are set up to provide housing consists predominantly of women. These women are actively involved in the planning, financial arrangements and construction of their houses. According to the Homeless Peoples Federation, an organization that is an ardent supporter and implementer of the Peoples Housing Process, at least 70% of their active membership comprise of women.
• Government is committed to ensuring that the percentage of housing subsidies that are allocated to women is representative of the percentage of female-headed households in a particular province. The Department of Housing is therefore currently monitoring the number of female-headed households that are accessing the housing subsidy. To date approximately 50% of the subsidies approved have been allocated to female-headed households.
• Given women’s traditional role in housing construction and maintenance it seems only logical that they should be involved in the construction of housing. Today there are an increasing number of women who are working as sub contractors, contractors and housing developers. As at the end of March 2003 approximately 83 projects that were implemented throughout the country were actively promoting women as contractors or developers. o In order to promote the training of women to participate in the housing sector the department has awarded bursaries to 5 female students to undertake studies in engineering, architecture and economics.
• Norms and standards regulating the size of houses to be built with the government’s subsidy grant have been announced to protect poor people with little or no knowledge of the technical aspects of house construction.
• Rural subsidies for people in areas where there are no local authorities have been announced. This will help rural householders, most of whom are women, to access subsidies.
• Subsidies have been announced to cater for the special needs of disabled people, many of whom are women.
• One of the Department’s programmes delivers energy saving houses.
• The Reference Group assists the Department in ensuring that women developers and contractors get assistance and support to participate in housing delivery.
• The Department’s Gender Focus Desk has played a critical role in drawing together a number of disparate housing organisations like: the SA Homeless People’s federation, People’s Dialogue, the National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency, the Women for Housing Group and the National Housing Coalition.

Budget Allocations

• R 10 million was allocated to the Homeless people’s federation to enable the organisation, whose members are mostly women, to set up a savings scheme to supplement the subsidy grant.
• The National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency (NURCHA) offers bridging finance to emerging housing contractors., 5% of whom are women.
• R176 00 has been granted, through the National Housing Board, towards a conference that will bring together CBOs experts in housing, NGOs and representatives from financial institutions to chart the path towards mass delivery and greater involvement of women.