Housing

The ARP Housing Strategy

Updated: 11 November 2009

Original strategy

Up until April 2005 the ARP housing strategy was to relocate more recent residents to housing projects outside of Alexandra.

Some 8500 households were relocated to either Diepsloot or Braamfisherville. This process of relocation to new residence was to be accompanied by a backyard upgrading initiative (old residents) within Alexandra itself.

Over and above the relocation of Alex residents to large housing projects outside of the greater Alex area and the upgrading of backyard shacks, the initial housing strategy also called for the development of some 11 000 social housing units.

This housing strategy has now been changed, in part as a result of lessons learnt during the early years of the project.

Click thru' to the Lessons Learnt page for details of the issues that have influenced the revised housing strategy.

New policy direction

The new policy direction is to find housing solutions for all Alexandra residents within the greater Alexandra area.

This poses two sets of problems:

1. How to manage the social issues as both old and new residents are now competing for the same new houses.
    
2. Programming for the time lag as new land is identified and housing projects are packaged.

A new housing strategy has been developed and approved to meet these challenges.

Creating new urban design concepts

The new ARP Housing Strategy is breaking new ground. Moving away from older, less effective practices, our project team has conceptualized a new and unique framework for low-cost, high-density urban living.

In this radical new approach, plans have been developed to ensure that traditional community interaction can be preserved while dramatically improving quality of life.  Exciting new concepts in urban design allow for the simultaneous increase in housing densities along with greater availability of open and shared community space.

Click thru' to a presentation on the ARP Housing Strategy : Gearing Up Delivery, dd Oct. 2005 2.9 Mb file (opens in a new browser window)

Housing targets

The new housing strategy aims to have contractors on site to deliver:

	9500  RDP housing units
	5700  Affordable rental
	2500  Upgraded hostel rooms
	2850  Social housing flats
	950  Bonded / credit-linked housing

It is important to note that these numbers do not reflect the total need, but rather reflect what is possible to deliver within the time frame of the project. It is thus important that the housing projects make as much impact as possible.