South Africa: Can Social Housing Help South Africa Overcome Its Legacy of Apartheid?

CATEGORY: Inclusive Economic Development
DATE: 29 March 2021
AUTHOR: All Africa.com

South African cities are among the most unequal and segregated in the world. In an effort to address chronic housing shortages, the government has delivered more than 3.5 million free homes since 1994. While the programme has been successful, it has also perpetuated spatial divisions because of the peripheral location of most projects.

To reverse this trend, the government launched a social-housing policy in 2006 to boost affordable rental accommodations in well-located urban areas. In a study financed by European Commission, we evaluated some of the impacts of this programme, revealing mixed results.

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