​Thembisa Shologu
Department of Human Settlements will soon launch a fund to aid first time black developers within the property development space.
Tabling the department's 2021/22 Budget Vote at the Gauteng Provincial Legislature on Tuesday, 15 June 2021, MEC Lebogang Maile said the fund would go towards township developments and developers within the real estate and property development sectors, as part of the provincial government's township economy revitalisation programme.
"We want to invest in building the township real estate market, through initiatives such as formalising the township backyard rental market and working with the Estate Agency Affairs Board to promote and produce township real estate agents and agencies, which can compete within the mainstream of this sector in the long term," said MEC Maile.
The Department has set aside about R150 billion worth of private development projects in the province within the affordable housing space that are stuck because of red tape and bureaucratic bottlenecks within the various spheres of government.
"We want to use human settlements as a vehicle to advance economic transformation, through initiatives such as the Gauteng Partnership Fund's, the Entrepreneur Empowerment Programme Fund, which has already disbursed over R400 million towards 40 development projects, by offering 100% finance to projects that are less than R15 million in value, as active senior debt funders," he added.
Maile said the department was faced with a problem of informal settlements that are built on private land and the owners are not cooperating with government in terms of looking to provide services and formalise them.
"We are going to be spending R1.1 billion over the next financial year to upgrade informal settlements and tackle the problem of growing informal settlements within the Gauteng City Region.
"Over the medium-term expenditure framework we will spend R10 billion on mega human settlements projects in order to expedite housing delivery in the province, using a new model of housing delivery and technology and systems that should help us overcome some of the problems we have faced in the past in providing mega human settlements delivery," he said.