Turning lodgers into landlords

Fortious Nhambura Features Writer
Harare has been starved of a major housing project in the past 15 or so years. This starvation has been partly blamed on council’s lack of resources and failure by the successive MDC-T led councils to fill in the housing gap.
While the housing waiting list continued to balloon and as service delivery also plummeted, the councillors concentrated on fighting Government and advancing party agendas.

According to the city authorities, Harare’s housing waiting list has since ballooned to around 50 000.
This number is, however, not reflective of the total number of people seeking shelter in the country’s capital as demand is estimated at more than 500 000.

The authorities say that the housing waiting list is made up of people who still have hope of getting housing stands through the city council.

With such delays, the majority of residents have either lost hope or placed their faith in co-operatives and private housing estate developers.
Although private housing units and co-operatives have come in handy in the provision of decent shelter to the city’s ballooning list of tenants, Harare should start working flat out to deliver houses to its residents.

That will dovetail with the national housing delivery programme that hopes to bring cheap and affordable housing to the people.
The new Zanu-PF Government’s promise to help in the provision of low-income houses to thousands of Zimbabweans has brought a new lease of life for residents of Harare and other cities.

This focus on providing decent housing for Zimbabwe’s urbanites has thus been welcomed by many people particularly in the capital city who see it as the only passage of graduating from perennial “lodgers to landlords”.

According to UN Habitant, more than 50 percent of the world’s population in developing nations would be living in cities and towns by the year 2025. Zimbabwe is no exception and must move with haste to avail not only accommodation in cities but also come up with projects that can accommodate the country’s rising urban population mainly due to rural urban migration.

Government with assistance of the Chinese has promised to spearhead the construction of 10 000 low-cost housing units in Harare and Chitungwiza as a way of alleviating the current housing shortage.

This is a plus to the work being done by private players and co-operatives in providing shelter to the people of Harare.
This does not, however, absolve the urban local authorities from their mandate.

City of Harare Director of Housing and Community Services Mr Justin Chivavaya said no major housing project has taken place in the past 20 years because of financial constrains.

This has been largely because of the withdrawal of the international financiers and Government’s Public Sector Investment Programme.
The city has not seen any major housing after Budiriro, Kuwadzana and Warren Park housing projects. This has affected the city’s housing delivery programme.

“After the withdrawal by these financiers we have not relaxed, but have come up with strategies to ensure that people continue to get decent housing. “Firstly, the city has used community based organisations commonly referred to as co-operatives. In the beginning we provided serviced land and later unserviced land for housing development. The co-operatives would then service the land and put the superstructure. That is the main strategy that we used fill the housing gap.

“Then we have the Private Public Partnerships, for example the CABS-City-Budiriro project where 3 100 units will be constructed and the beneficiaries drawn from the housing waiting list. Other small projects are in Tynwald and other areas.

“We also have another group of people who were displaced under Operation Murambatsvina. Initially, they were supposed to go to Hopley Farm but we later discovered that because of their income they could not fit into that scheme. We encouraged them to join the pay scheme. Under the scheme people pool their resources together, service the land and then build their houses. We have over 200 pay schemes dotted across the city.

“We also have the employer-assisted scheme, where employers assist their workers service the land and build the homes or they can at least work out a stop order payment system with the monies being channelled towards development of houses. Under the employer-assisted schemes we have the Glaudina project off Bulawayo Road where 1 000 stands are being are being serviced,” he said.

Mr Chivavaya added that he was glad that the private sector was coming on board and beginning to contribute towards the provision of housing in the city.

He said it was difficult to put a building timeframe on co-operatives, employer- assisted and pay schemes as the people have to look for their own resources to service land.

“With the other three schemes it is difficult to put down a timeframe because we would have already burdened them with the servicing of land.

“We have allowed co-operatives and pay schemes to erect temporary structures and start developing the major structures after opening roads and laying sewer and water infrastructure,” he said.

Harare Residents Trust director Mr Precious Shumba said the city should not bask in the glory of housing projects sponsored by private players, but should ensure provision of serviced land.

He added that council should take full responsibility for housing provision and ensure that people are not abused by unscrupulous co-operative leaders and housing trusts that are abusing members’ funds.

Despite its efforts to ease housing requirements in its area of jurisdiction, the city continues to expand laterally thus threatening the country’s prime agricultural land.

Experts say time has come for the city to expand vertically to avoid running out of land.
Residents interviewed say the council should start building upwards to ensure the city does not waste land.

Mrs Rutendo Takaruza questioned why council continued to provide land for lateral housing developments and not encourage housing developers to construct blocks of flats like Government has been doing.

“The city must not continue to cry that they have no land when they offering land for horizontal housing development. Why is the city failing to embrace densification of housing like what other developed countries have done?

“It is time local authorities stop lateral expansion of the city so that they maximise on available land,” she said.
But, Mr Chivavaya said: “The city has a number of sites reserved for flats that we need to start developing. I think the Government has already taken a lead with the Willowvale flats but the only challenge is that these are expensive and cannot be built by individuals. We then need to take on board other players under the PPPs projects,” he said.

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