The Sunday Mail
Nyasha Takawira Mutsindikwa
Low-income housing simply means housing that is affordable to the generality of the population or those with incomes below the poverty datum line.
An indicator of affordability according to United Nations Habitat (2010) is when a household is not spending more than 30 percent on housing expenditure, be it rental or owner-occupied housing.
However, affordability varies from one economy to another.
A variety of materials and building technologies have been used in various countries to reduce the cost of housing. In Zimbabwe, Circular Number 70 of 2004 was put in place to ensure affordable housing to low-income earners by making housing standards flexible.
It provides for minimum requirements on planning, construction materials and infrastructure.
However, despite all these measures, low-income housing provision remains a challenge for several reasons.
Firstly, home ownership, which is the cornerstone of housing policies in Zimbabwe, is being promoted against a background where the majority of people living in cities are poor due to high levels of formal unemployment.
The implication is that only a few can afford meaningful home ownership in its “purest sense”.
Secondly, too much emphasis on home ownership and rent control regulations has resulted in the low construction of rental accommodation despite the higher demand for rental housing.
Many people have resorted to lodging (multi-habitation) as the only option in most cities and towns of Zimbabwe due to unavailability of formal rental housing.
Thirdly, because only a few can afford home ownership programmes, it is only these few who really benefit because even those residential stands allocated to the poor will end up being owned by high income earners, resulting in multiple ownership of residential properties in areas designated to benefit the poor.
Although it has been advanced and prioritised in housing policies of many countries, the appropriateness of home ownership to low-income earners in developing countries like Zimbabwe needs to be examined.
There is need, in my view, for a paradigm shift by Government so that our housing policies are not biased towards home ownership.
There is need for an appropriate mix of housing tenure options where rental housing is not perceived as an inferior option.
Government and local authorities should focus on construction of public rental housing and effectively manage these properties through their estates departments so that revenues collected can be used to maintain the properties or even invest in other housing projects.
Building walk-up flats is good insofar as economising urban land.
Let home ownership be for those who can really afford it, with Government catering for low-income earners by making affordable rental housing available as home ownership is not for everyone.
I would state the South Korean housing system as a case, which we can draw lessons from.
The Korean housing system is described as an institution whose construction costs depend heavily on private financing sources and strong interventions of the government into the supply market.
In this regard, housing has become an investment tool that is unusually highly speculative.
Government — in response — has put a lot of legal sanctions as evidenced by the setting up of many measures to facilitate housing supply by establishing legislation and organisations which are meant to stimulate housing provision for home ownership and rental housing.
Mr Nyasha Takawira Mutsindikwa is a lecturer in the University of Zimbabwe’s Department of Rural and Urban Planning and a DPhil Candidate. This article is extracted from his thesis entitled “Low-income Home Ownership in the Post-Colonial City: Case of Five Selected Suburbs in Harare, Zimbabwe”
