LIVINGSTONE MARUFU
Zimbabwe’s housing backlog has soared to more than 1.5m this year from 600 000 units in 2011 due to rural to urban migration , an executive with Integrated Properties has said.
Mike Juru, the CEO of Integrated Properties told Business Times that more people were now flocking to urban areas largely due to climate change which has hit the rural areas harder.
Most of them have now turned to vending in towns and cities, to eke out an honest living.
Juru said this has resulted in high demand for houses.
Shortages of houses has, however, resulted in the mushrooming of illegal settlements in towns and cities.
“The national housing backlog stood at 600 000 units between 2010 and 2012 to 1.5m this year following huge movement of people from rural to urban areas
“This has pushed up demand as more and more houses are needed to match the rise in demand,” Juru said.
According to the National Housing and Social Amenities Ministry, there are approximately 1.2m people on the government’s national housing waiting list.
Juru said well-planned high rise buildings can solve the housing crisis in the country.
“Planned buildings and high rise buildings are the solutions to the huge demand as we are wasting a lot of spaces with low buildings.
“We also need to make it a policy to have solar geysers and solar systems in housing units as buildings contribute around 46% of carbon emissions. It’s even worse in the developed world,” he said.
Experts say local authorities and the government have not really invested in the provision of housing and accommodation to the citizenry.
Instead, they relinquished this responsibility to housing cooperatives, the majority of whom were ripping off desperate home seekers.
Juru said the rapidly growing communities in Harare meant to accommodate low-income earners—such as Hopely Farm, Caledonia, Hatcliff and Whitecliff and built by housing cooperatives—were lacking social infrastructure such as schools, health and recreational facilities, and shopping centres.
The poor condition of the emerging communities is attributed to poor planning and corruption by officials in the Housing and Community Services Department, as well as among councillors and officials in the urban planning and environmental management committees.
There are reports that corrupt housing cooperative leaders have allocated land in some reserved open spaces where clinics, schools and shops were meant to be put.
The government has had multiple plans to roll out public housing schemes around the country, including a national housing policy launched in 1999.
But, the government lacked the resources to keep up with rising demand.
The ministry invested over US$25m in housing development in 2012 through joint ventures with land developers and local authorities.
However, a senior official in the Ministry of National Housing and Social Amenities, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said US$176.5m was required annually to address Zimbabwe’s public housing backlog by 2015.
The government’s 2005 slum clearance programme, Operation Murambatsvina, made over 700,000 people homeless and worsened the country’s housing crisis.
Promises to re-house those whose shacks had been bulldozed have gone unfulfilled.
Thousands are still living in squatter camps.
Cluster housing units have been identified as an alternative for delivering affordable housing.
Government said it has now adopted the use of new technologies in housing delivery where it is reducing the cost by about 35% and delivery time by about 50%.
“It is very realistic and achievable to have that backlog cleared within a very foreseeable period in light with the National Development Strategy.”
“We are looking at cluster housing as one model but we are also looking at densification. For every land set aside for housing 40% must be for the construction of flats in order to reduce the backlog from where it is to meaningful levels,” National Housing and Social Amenities minister Daniel Garwe recently said.
He said the second model is gated communities but within those developments, 40% of the developed land will be set aside for the construction of high-rise buildings. Garwe said the government will start with four and six floors.
