Co-ops to the rescue

very first hurdle difficult.
This is the hurdle of owning a residential stand in the first place.
It is the policy of Harare, like many cities around the world, to target the provision of housing for low-income earners.
On the other hand, middle and higher income groups can be provided for by the private sector at a profit, which the low- income earner would not afford.
Lately, with ballooning city and town populations, acquiring a residential stand — at least one of your own among the million-odd among Harare’s homeseekers — has been increasingly difficult.
The regular acquisition of more land, more farms by the City of Harare, has not had perceivable impact.
Recently, Harare announced it was acquiring 25 more farms around the city for housing.
Outside of this supposedly huge boon, the old routine, the old wait still has to obtain.
One might have to be content with staying on the city’s housing list, for some years, to be allocated municipal land.
“The first expectation is that authorities should provide at least serviced stands for the low-income group,” say city planning expert Mr Percy Toriro.
“Better still, it can provide social housing for the ultra-low-income bracket.
“While provision of unserviced land has been done in what are known as ‘pay schemes’ where the beneficiaries’ money is used to service land, this is best for middle- income earners who have relatively higher disposable incomes.
“For the higher income groups, council can only provide land by zone and not worry about servicing. So while we have as a city done better for the higher income groups, we could do a lot more for the low-income,” he told The Herald.
The best chance that has come is by way of housing co-operatives that are now the dominant players in development of housing.
“No doubt co-operatives are the biggest providers of housing at the moment. Over the past decade, all councils in the country have not met demand for housing at a time when co-ops have delivered at least 100 000 stands,” observed Mr Toriro.
He added: “We must commend people’s efforts at providing own housing. However, we must develop the co-ops’ capacity to manage the groups, manage funds, and manage the technical processes associated with housing development. This is important. However, my studies have proved that ahead of everyone else, co-ops have contributed immensely to housing delivery during the past decade.”
Several co-operatives have sprouted in Harare in the past few years with varying degrees of success.
Government has availed free State land to co-operatives at Caledonia, Hatcliffe, Snake Park and Hopley farms, among others.
The huge successes of some projects have been blighted by few cases of irregularities.
Cases of fraud, corruption, infighting, improper allocation and financial irregularities have been recorded, in some cases have been recorded.
For example, homeseekers were recently duped of thousands of dollars by some fraudsters who purported that they were selling stands in Mainway Meadows at prices ranging between US$2 500 and US$5 000 each.
The unsuspecting homeseekers were asked to pay US$20 as joining fee, then monthly subscriptions of US$100 each for five months.
After seven months of paying subscriptions the complainants insisted on occupying their stands but were told that the stands were now in Hatcliffe and not in Waterfalls.
The homeseekers were taken to Hatcliffe and shown another piece of undeveloped land, which the trio promised to develop but nothing materialised.
Eventually, the “sellers” disappeared with US$7 920 and vacated from their “offices”, leaving the homeseekers stranded.
The matter was then reported to the police leading to the arrest of the fraudsters.
In another case, in the sprawling Hatcliffe suburb recently, 1 000 families were left pondering their next move after the High Court gave them a 48-hour ultimatum to vacate residential stands they bought from politician Mr Justine Zvandasara’s co-operatives in Hatcliffe.
Zvandasara had been embroiled in an ownership wrangle with politician Nyasha Chikwinya.
The High Court ruled that Zvandasara, chairman of Harare North Housing Co-operatives Union, was illegally occupying the 84-hectare land, which rightly belonged to Chikwinya.
For all the travails, there is a regulatory environment for housing co-ops.
The Zimbabwe National Association of Housing Co-operatives is an umbrella organisation of over 1 000 national housing cooperatives.
The organisation was established as a means of providing advice to member groups on dealing with local and national authorities and to offer training in building techniques.
ZINAHCO seeks to change urban building standards which dictate that hook-ups to public services must be in place before an owner may begin to build a home.
They can be complemented in various ways.
Says Mr Toriro: “There is need to significantly invest in infrastructure to support housing development. This means investments in highways to new housing development areas, widening roads in existing areas to facilitate growth.
“Building of new dams and water treatment facilities as well as sewerage treatment plants. These are critical if we want to seriously tackle the current challenges. We also need to re-look at our policies.
“If we are to speedily have housing that is convenient to the low-income, let’s replicate the flats model along major transport corridors so that we can link housing to efficient transport in employment corridors.
“We need cross-subsidies where the high income groups pay more for their stands to support low-income housing . . . only with these new initiatives can I forecast a well-housed satisfied Harare population in the next 10-20 years.”
A national housing policy that is expected to bring about a synchronised and co-ordinated approach to housing delivery in the country has already been tabled before Cabinet and awaits approval.
The policy will seek to improve the networking and stakeholder co-ordination as well as create a database of stakeholder and co-operating partners in the housing delivery programme.
To help ease accommodation challenges, Government has acquired farms on the capital’s periphery.It has handed over 25 farms in Mashonaland Central and one in Mashonaland East to Harare City Council for future development under a 10-year grand development plan.