Housing and living conditions
- The national budget allocated for Community Development, which includes human settlements, water and electrification programmes, public transport and municipal infrastructure increased by 7%, from R183 billion in 2017/18, to R196 billion in 2018/19.
- Between 2014 and 2019, government aimed to provide 750 000 poor households, particularly in informal settlements, with adequate housing and improved living conditions. Between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2017, 285 043 households in informal settlements had been upgraded.
- With an estimated 2.1 million backlog of low-cost homes, and amid housing and land protest flare-ups across the country, government is exploring the option of acquiring serviced land owned by state-owned enterprises and municipalities, and giving the land and bulk infrastructure to poor people who are able to finance the building of their own homes.
- The emergency housing grant, which is expected to take effect in 2018/19 and will be funded through allocations amounting to R1.3 billion over the medium term, intends to respond to emergencies related to housing and human settlements, including providing temporary shelter in emergencies such as fires in informal settlements.The Early Childhood Development in South Africa 2016 report, released by Statistics South Africa in early 2018, detailed that only 35% of young children in the Eastern Cape and 46% in Limpopo had access to piped water inside their dwellings or on site, while young children in Gauteng and the Western Cape lived in households with nearly universal access to piped water inside their dwellings or on site (94% and 89% respectively).
INITIATIVE. (C) 2017-2019.