February 26, 2004
By Philippa Garson
GETTING residents back into the city is one of the cornerstones of inner city regeneration - a trend borne out in other major urban centres around the world. And because of the success of initiatives like the Johannesburg Housing Company, more and more people are flocking to take up occupancy in renovated, secure and well-maintained apartments around the city.
Brickfields - architectural perspectives |
Since it was established in 1995 the JHC has devoted itself to this cause, creating 1 842 housing units in or near the city, either by refurbishing existing buildings or building them from scratch. As its brochure boldly states, the JHC is "committed to regenerate the Johannesburg inner city through the provision of quality, value for money accommodation and service for all who choose to live there, in a manner that is both sustainable and promotes growth".
From its impressive track record, it is clear that the JHC is putting its money where its mouth is. The organisation has so far refurbished or built 13 buildings for rental accommodation across the city: in Joubert Park, Troyeville, downtown Johannesburg, Hillbrow and Fordsburg. All are fully occupied, with arrears in rental running at less than five percent. The latest and most ambitious of its projects is Brickfields, a 650-unit social housing project being built at the foot of the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Newtown.
Work on the R100-million housing development begins next month and is set to finish by April 2005. Once the tenants move in, JHC can claim to have upped living stock in the city by eight percent. And it is unlikely that the organisation will have much trouble finding tenants for Brickfields, a huge housing complex that will include four eight-storey towers.
Although the rentals in JHC's buildings are not cheap - a bachelor apartment costs at least R900 a month - the demand for safe, convenient and attractive living space is such that most of their apartments have been filled within days of completion. Likely tenants for Brickfields should earn between R3 500 to R12 000 per month and 35 percent of the lower-income tenants will qualify for housing subsidies.
What then is behind JHC's remarkable success? Firstly, the demand for what the organisation offers - safe, affordable and central rental accommodation - undoubtedly exists. "Despite the post-transition hype around home ownership there was a realisation that there would always be significant numbers of people wanting rented accommodation," says CEO Taffy Adler, a building science masters graduate with a background in the labour movement.
History has shown, adds Adler, that a residential component is a crucial part of inner city revival, as has happened in cities like New York, Chicago and London. "If you want a 24-hour city, you need people living in it," he says. The concept of social housing implies some kind of government assistance and much of the capital for JHC's buildings has come from foreign funding and government housing subsidies.
This in turn enables JHC to subsidise a percentage of residents who cannot afford to pay the full rental. It also allows for tight management systems - each building has a housing supervisor who liases with tenants. Tenant committees in each building run training programmes and community activities. Anyone renting an apartment must pay two months rent as deposit and must attend a training session on lease details, house rules and payment of water and electricity accounts.
JHC's buildings are also gated, with 24-hour security. Says Adler: "Everyone's biggest concern is crime but when it comes to actual statistics, the figures are actually very small." He believes perception more than reality has been the stumbling block to further investment in the inner city. "People look at Hillbrow and all they see is chaos. But if you go inside, you'll experience something completely different. Hillbrow is the closest we have to a 24/7 environment. Relatively speaking, its occupants are better educated and upwardly mobile," he says.
Certainly, perceptions must be changing because the mood of today is very different from the gloomy pessimism towards the inner city of the mid-1990s. When it started out JHC was given a capital injection of R50-million from the European Union (invested in the company by its first major shareholder, Kagiso Trust) and R5-million from the Flemish regional government. It bought its first building, San Martin in Joubert Park, in 1996, and has not looked back. Foreign funding on that scale is unlikely to come again but JHC doesn't appear to need it.
On the back of its successes (recognised by several awards), private investors are now coming on board and both the money and the people with some money to spend are flowing back into the city. The first private sector breakthrough came in 2000 when Absa gave JHC an R11-million loan. "This was the first commercial loan granted to a social housing organisation in South Africa for an inner city project since the banking sector had redlined the Johannesburg CBD in the early 1990s," claims JHC.
Millions of rands are being invested by the private sector in Brickfields, the biggest public/private partnership in a social housing and residential project in the country. Gauteng province provided 30 percent of the initial capital, paving the way for Anglo American and Absa to come on board with sizeable loans. The land was made available by the Joburg council.
The first tower-housing project since Ponte was built in the 1970s, Brickfields will stand as a symbol for inner city rejuvenation. It will also bring many concrete benefits to the city - employment, residence and a sizeable rates base, among them.
It was once part of the broader multi-racial settlement that serviced the emerging mining village in the late 19th Century. Called Brickfields because of the clay found along the Fordsburg spruit that was used to make bricks, the settlement or shantytown, where Europeans, Africans, Chinese, Indians and Cape Malays all lived together, was eventually razed to the ground. Brickfields looks likely to usher in a new era of vibrancy and cosmopolitan life for the city.
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