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The Herald, June 29, 1985
OUT of the 24 450 offers accepted when the Harare City Council introduced the home ownership scheme in 1980/81 for municipal rented houses, 9 195 deeds of sale are still to be processed.
The director of housing and community services, Cde Alban Musekiwa, told a recent meeting of the finance and development committee that processing of the outstanding deeds would now be speeded up with the recruitment of 16 part-time clerks to undertake the computerisation of the home ownership loans.
Of the rented houses, 13 084 had not yet been offered for sale, but “the various reasons were now being analysed” and a comprehensive list would be forwarded to the city treasurer soon to enable him to prepare a report on the feasibility of offering some of the rented units for sale.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
- A Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) is a subsidised-sale of public housing usually under a Government initiated programme.
- At independence, the black majority Government took over a very controlled and largely rental urban housing system, and to redress the situation it instructed local authorities to sell their houses to sitting tenants. This resulted in blacks, especially those in high density areas that had been excluded from owning properties during the colonial era, becoming home owners in their own right
- Government is on a drive to alleviate housing shortage in the country through initiating projects that will deliver affordable houses to the people.
- In addition, the Second Republic also embarked on regularising informal settlements under the Presidential Title Deeds and Settlement Regularisation Programme starting with Epworth, where the President personally handed over 265 title deeds to residents in April.
- The 265 title deeds were part of 11 200 title deeds that have been prepared for homeowners in the area.
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