July 16, 2007
By Neil Fraser
The past two weeks or so has seen the media highlighting various aspects related to increasing problems in the provision of residential accommodation.
A report on rentals revealed substantial increases being experienced nationwide but particularly in Johannesburg and East London and this is evidently just the start.
Trafalgar's property index has grown from 100 in 2003 to 129.3 this year, translating into rental increases of 30 percent over three-and-a-half years. Just Letting's figures reveal rental increases of 9.8 percent in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year. So what's driving rentals higher?
Apart from rampant urbanisation (almost 300 000 people have flocked to the inner city to find a place to live (Engineering News, 10 July 2007), the constant rises in rent were inevitable, said various property experts. This was due to:
- The steady pace of economic growth, which had resulted in more people being offered jobs.
- Household formation, or demand for rental accommodation, appeared to be far outstripping the creation of new stock supply.
- Rental demand was being driven by the rapid reduction in household sizes, from 4.48 people in 1996 to 3.69 people in 2005.
- A rise in number of households to 13 million from 9 million in the same period, as well as rental demand from young people.
- Rising house prices have pushed first-time homebuyers off the property ladder while the rate of development of new apartments and other rental stock had slowed down because of rising interest rate, building and land costs.
This latter issue of rising land costs has been very apparent from the value at which existing properties have been sold under auction over the past year or two in the inner city.
Properties are fetching far higher figures than would ever have been contemplated a couple of years back and I still believe that the market has a greater upside. That however isn't good news when it comes to providing housing accommodation in the inner city.
Taffy Adler, CEO of the Johannesburg Housing Company, in a recent edition of the Mail and Guardian, pointed out that the purchase and conversion cost of the ex Landdrost Hotel eight years ago was nearly half that of Cresthill.
The problem is that rentals aren't quite as elastic and, whilst middle income can probably still afford reasonable increases, the lower income is still hopelessly stuck. As Adler said, even his own company, the city's biggest provider of social housing, is not catering for the poorest of the poor. One of the issues raised by him (e-daily of Sunday Times, 4 July 2007) is that "local councils, provincial authorities, national departments, such as public works, and parastatals like Transnet, are disposing of land to the highest bidder on public auction – this places centrally situated land and buildings beyond the reach of the poor as it makes it impossible for any developers to offer accommodation at a reasonable price".
One of the culprits behind this attitude is of course the 'scorecard' system adopted by the public authorities by which employees are judged and receive bonuses – not a great incentive to keep public property prices down or do deals with developers if you are being paid in accordance with how much you actually bring in!
Pro poor approach
Adler's plea for public owned land to be part of a pro-poor approach by all levels of government is spot on if we are going to dent the huge backlog in housing for the poor.
Sure, the City is coming to the party with its commitment (as an outcome of the Inner City Summit and Charter process) to provide 70 000 accommodation units by 2014, of which 20 percent will be earmarked for the urban poor (Engineering News, 10 July 2007), but these are to be, hopefully, provided by the private sector in response to an incentive scheme.
In addition, the City is currently "rehabilitating three old buildings to serve as temporary shelters" which figure "is likely to triple in the next 12 months".
But with all the hype and media articles about responding to residential accommodation needs, I still don't see statements about housing provision for whatever level of income being coupled with the provision of social facilities and open space.
Already the city has absorbed 10 000 more living units in the past five years with a further 5 000 underway – at just two persons a unit, that means 30 000 extra people being accommodated – but I don't see any increase in facilities!
Even desely packed New York City, planning 250 000 additional housing units by 2030, "will open 290 schoolyards as public playgrounds and create public plazas in every community". Housing, health and open space are integrally linked.
The key words in modern cityspeak are all about green, healthy, sociable, civic and inclusive. They make up what a recent publication calls "The Humane Metropolis".
"Nature in the city," wrote Anne Spirn (The Granite Garden), "must be cultivated, like a garden, rather than ignored or subdued." Neal Peirce of the Washington Post Writers Group says, "That means renewed attention to welcoming urban parks, from entire 'green necklace' systems within metro areas to the emerald-green sanctuary of small vest pocket parks. Community gardens, green roofs, street trees and planted medians all count -- and today more than ever as antidotes to the 'urban heat island' phenomenon and the spread of global warming-inducing greenhouse gases."
The Humane Metropolis approach promotes shared streets and spaces, the protection and creation of all possible natural areas – parks, greenways, forest tracts – fostering a shared sense of "ecological stewardship", urban gardening and farm markets. It also supports efforts toward environmental justice, so that low-income areas are not burdened with undue, damaging pollution.
"And of course they aim to create welcoming, green places in cities, nature within urban places, bringing people together to rub shoulders, recreate, have fun - and, with luck, even get to know each other." Adding, they hope, social justice. As Ford Foundation official Carl Anthony writes, "Issues of race and poverty, social and environmental justice, must be central to the way we envision a truly humane metropolis, bringing together people and nature in the 21st century."
Joeys humane? I think it's possible but we must plan for it.
Name origins
Had an interesting e-mail from David Campbell from the UK regarding
Citichat 25 "Caramba! We're actually Portuguese in name!". He writes: "I did my Civil Engineer's Site Training, 1962-1964, in the City of London under a Scots Engineer, Robin Anderson. I arrived in Joburg in January 1967 and worked on the design of the Motorway. I wrote to Robin concerning the work. His reply surprised me and, I think, rather startled Miss Smith, the City Librarian who was writing her book on Joburg street names. More or less verbatim it read:
"I see you're in my Uncle Alec's little dorp. I believe there's a street there named after him. When I was a wee lad, Marshall of Clackmannon dangled me on his knee and said, "Young Anderson, never you forget it was Oom Paul, Johan Rissick (sic), your Uncle Alec and me – we started Johannesburg. Johan Rissick was getting married the following Saturday, so we named it after him as a wedding present."
Miss Smith wrote to Robin who confirmed the story. His father had Uncle Alec's diary – a school notebook which Alec had sent back to his Mother. She then queried the wedding with the Rissik family. They stated that he did not marry until ten years later; although they have always claimed the City was named after him. She had no explanation for the situation. Mystery!! My only explanation is that the bride had a change of heart and did not arrive at the kirk. Which man, ten years down the line, would tell his new bride that she was second choice??
Anderson and Marshall are both well-known names in Joburg. Why should Marshall have given Robin such a story? Robin had never been to South Africa. Nobody here accepts Robin's story. But the circumstances, and the "straight from the horse's mouth" source, give it the ring of truth to me.
Can anybody throw any light on the wedding?
David Campbell"
From my little bit of research, the Rissik family evidently arrived in South Africa in 1876 when Johann was 19 – in 1891 an article appeared in The Press Weekly Edition which states that Rissik had "burdened himself with the pleasant chains of matrimony about a year ago", which would make his marriage and the 'naming of Johannesburg' 1890. However a booklet by Charles Cowen, three years earlier in 1887, referred to Johann Rissik as the Johann of Johannesburg.
It would generally seem that the story is unlikely although I was interested to find that Marshall, who had bought the area south-west of the mining camp (Marshalltown) was married to Johann Rissik's sister and one source book states that Marshall was "probably tipped off about the location of the mining camp".
Hirschson's theory (Citichat 25) is that the city was in fact named later than 1886 but that the references to Johann Rissik and Johannes Joubert were all put out on instruction from Kruger as smokescreens to divert the English desire to prove that Kruger was conniving with the Portuguese which would have given them the excuse to declare war earlier than happened.
Anybody got any thoughts or comments, let me know.
Cheers, Neil
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