delivering better houses
4 March 2009
A comprehensive housing delivery approach is being rolled out to communities
in an effort to deliver better houses. The enhanced People's Housing Programme
(PHP) was approved on 8 July 2008 by the National Department of Housing (DoH).
The programme is aimed at assisting government to deliver better human
settlement outcomes based on community contribution, partnerships and
leveraging of additional resources through partnerships. This will be achieved
by developing a culture of saving, skills transfer, and community empowerment,
building of community assets and social security and cohesion.
The PHP policy recognises that the community is the initiator and driver of
the housing delivery process. The programme is intended to build on existing
livelihood strategies so that social capital already built in a community, is
capitalised on. The programme has a strong poverty alleviation focus aiming at
poor households. It ensures greater understanding and responsiveness to the
needs of vulnerable groups including women, youth, the elderly, the disabled
and children. It will bring about more integrated, area based development as it
encourages strong linkages with other government departments and programmes
through ongoing community engagement via the housing delivery process. The PHP
programme is based on the principles of:
* Community decision making/choice
* Community contribution
* Partnerships and leveraging additional resources.
The approach redefines the PHP programme, establishing a new funding
mechanism for PHP with particular emphasis on the capacity building element and
for providing sufficient institutional support for the newly defined PHP. The
new strategy recognised that a number of different approaches to community
development needed to be accommodated with community involvement in the
decision making processes. Community empowerment and additional resources are
the determining factors for making it a successful project. The programme
provides for a process in which beneficiaries actively participate in decision
making over the housing process and housing products and make a contribution in
such a way that among others:
* Beneficiaries are empowered individually and collectively
* Various partnerships are created
* Better houses that are suited to the needs of the individual households are
built.
The enhanced PHP programme will be implemented as from 1 April 2009.
Contact person:
Simphiwe Kunene
Cell: 082 413 3931
Issued by: Department of Housing, Mpumalanga Provincial Government
4 March 2009
