By Anish Abraham
WITH a decade of success behind it, the Johannesburg Housing Company (JHC) hopes to play a bigger role in the regeneration of the inner city by encouraging people to live, work and play in an area abandoned by its previous tenants as they fled to the northern suburbs.
Dombolo Masilela, the JHC marketing communications manager, says the company was formed in 1995 to assist with inner city regeneration and to provide affordable housing for city residents. A Section 21 company was formed to take over empty buildings, a board of directors was appointed to manage it, and any profits received are reinvested in the company.
Initial funding to set up the company came from sources like the European Union and the Flemish Regional Government; it has also continuously formed partnerships and made alliances with a variety of housing organisations, banks, overseas funding organisations and various spheres of government, including the City of Johannesburg and the Johannesburg Development Agency. It also gets subsidies from the Gauteng provincial government.
"Our mandate was to provide housing for the urban lower class - those who earn less than R3 500 a month," Masilela says. However, the company also caters for middle and upper class tenants to subsidise the lower cost units.
The JHC owns about 1 800 housing units in 20 buildings, making up 8 percent of inner city housing. The buildings are in the central business district, Joubert Park, Newtown, Fordsburg, Troyeville, Jeppestown and Hillbrow.
In Newtown the Brickfields project is under way. It is the fourth new development by the JCH, but the first to be done on such a large scale. The land was given to the company by the City. According to Masilela, 650 units will be available once the R100-million first phase is completed, by the end of May. "The first phase will bring about 2 000 people to live in the inner city."
The programme, also known as the eKhaya Neighbourhood Programme, includes greening the pavements, placing rest areas outdoors and installing CCTV cameras for surveillance.
Another initiative is the Community Development Division, also knows as Makhulong a Matla (greener pastures). It encourages communities to create forums and committees, and even pre-schools. The two programmes have been running for over a year.
Outsourcing to private security companies has ensured the safety of JHC tenants, while all JHC buildings have a housing superviser or manager who is on site to attend to any problems that may arise.
The company also has incentives for its employees to strive for excellence, sending chosen employees to get experience at social housing organisations like the Notting Hill Housing Trust (UK), Rooftops (Toronto, Canada) and Mercy Housing (Denver, USA).
Board members have also taken a personal interest in the regeneration of the inner city and are "eager to see an improvement in the quality of peoples' lives".
"I think a lot of social housing companies now benchmark themselves against the Johannesburg Housing Company, but funding is a major problem when it comes to this sector," Masilela says.
The future of the JHC lies in expansion, with sites in Soweto and Nasrec already under consideration for developments similar to that taking place in Newtown. "There is a ripple effect from what we are doing," Masilela says. "You see other landowners renovating their properties once we have done work on ours."
However, with more than 20 years of inner city decline, she says the problem will not be solved overnight. "I am optimistic that by 2030, the inner city and its surrounding suburbs will have changed for the good and be back to the glory days."
For more information, contact the Johannesburg Housing Company on 011 241 6900.
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