WCPDF releases Paper on enabling Housing Delivery: Industry insights and solutions for South Africa's housing challenges

The Western Cape Property Development Forum (WCPDF) has released a position paper, Enabling the Delivery of Housing in South Africa, providing insights from the property development and construction industry recommending ways to move forward.

The Highlights

• WCPDF's position paper consolidates industry insights to address housing delivery challenges in South Africa, promoting collaboration for progress.
• The paper explores systemic issues such as finance, government frameworks, infrastructure, land availability, and affordability in housing delivery.
• WCPDF recommends innovative solutions, including financing breakdowns, reliable data, improved policy, and addressing human capital and construction mafia challenges.

While the paper refers to the common areas of challenge around housing delivery, highlighted through the experience of Western Cape property developers, the paper places focus on common challenges throughout the country, with recommendations for moving this critical process forward throughout the country.

Says Deon van Zyl, WCPDF chairperson: “Taken individually, the key findings in the paper are not new. They have been debated and discussed in forums and industry groupings for many years, and much research has been undertaken across various subsectors within the housing market.

“However, by consolidating the essence of development experiences into one working document, this paper is being published to encourage the crucial collaboration required to take on the obstacles that unnecessarily inhibit housing delivery.”

The paper has been received extensive input over the past year from the WCPDF’s Workgroup on Housing, says workgroup convenor, Harold Spies, Managing Director of Similan Properties.

Explains Spies: “This paper aims to get the production line of property going. It suggests opportunities towards practical discussions on innovative financial thinking, affordability, cost, the regulatory and legislative processes, incentives, experimentation and ultimately delivery. It also highlights the need to understand the requirements of the end user across the spread of product.”

With the workgroup made up from among the WCPDF’s fully-voluntary Management Committee, the paper has received input from private developers working extensively in the development of housing and in particular affordable housing, architects, urban designers and town planners, representation from the traditional finance world, the legal sector, and associations including the Development Action Group (DAG) and the Township Developers Forum of Western Cape (TDFoWC).

The paper gained momentum following a session on “What does (or doesn’t) make housing delivery possible”, held during the 2024 WCPDF annual conference and facilitated by Professor Turok (SA DSI/NRF Research Chair in City-Region Economics, University of the Free State).

Turok outlined ‘Six Systemic Changes’ facing housing delivery in South Africa:

• The reluctance in society to embrace property development
• The government and regulatory framework
• Finance and the risk-aversion of financial institutions
• The economic climate
• Infrastructure, and
• The availability of land

The WCPDF’s position paper further explores these changes, but also unpacks other challenges experienced by the Western Cape industry, and presents possible solutions around:

• The question of equity and the need for innovation around traditional financing
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  Posing ideas such as: the possible braking down of finance into sub-parts of a development; reaching an understanding with traditional financiers around which part of the production line holds the highest risk for banks; reconsidering ownership of land towards establishing equity; and the need to establish more innovative financial solutions around the micro development sector. It also looks towards the establishment and possible funding of a South African-wide Government Fund which could act not as a lender but rather as a guarantor for affordable developments, within strict guidelines.

• The need for reliable and consistent data to define “Affordable” market demand
  
  The emphasis to especially define “affordable” under one reliable “guardian” entity such as the Banking Association of South Africa (BASA) and which defines it down to local levels throughout South Africa, instead of under the multitudinous entities that currently define it in many different ways. The paper also stipulates the need for regular public-availability audits on all government land.

• Overcoming the hurdles around government legislation and policy requirement
  
  Understanding the disconnect between what happens on the ground versus what legislation dictates in theory; tackling the inordinate delays caused in production timelines as a result of government’s inability to deliver across numerous fronts; and the ongoing deterioration of implementing agents within local municipalities.
  
  The paper also urges the use of private sector expertise towards policy decision making, and asks government to define its role in terms of whether it should be a facilitator or enabler of housing delivery.

• The urgent need to address human capital in the industry across the board
  
  This is from lack of non-tertiary skills to current capacity within government; as well as the haemorrhaging of professionals and skills out of South Africa.

• The construction mafia
  
  The emphasis and critical need for not only comprehensive reporting by the industry of matters to authorities as a Schedule 5 crime, but also the critical need to for the property development sector to grasp the importance of comprehensive community engagement from conceptualisation of any project.

The final point covered in the Position paper is for the need for self-reflection by the private industry sector itself.

Van Zyl stresses: “It is crucial for our private sector members to hold each other accountable for the challenges we create ourselves. This extends from the approach of private sector developers in the provision of affordable housing to consultants and contractors  being realistic and honest about whether their capacity actually exists within their own entities to tender in the first place, or where the quality of tender submissions are simply not good enough.

“Just as we call on government and financial institutions, it is also critical that we call on our entire industry to not only uphold professional standards but actively and collaboratively be prepared to work with all groupings within our sector, private and public alike, if we are really sincere about growing and transforming our industry and economy.”

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MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Contact Carola Koblitz on 082 568 1621 or email media@wcpdf.co.za

CLICK TO ACCESS WCPDF Housing Position Paper

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MORE ABOUT THE WCPDF (wcpdf.org.za)

The Western Cape Property Development Forum (WCPDF) is a registered non-profit organisation (246-760 NPO). It was founded in 2008 to create awareness, address the challenges that face the property development and construction industry and to be the collective voice of the industry in the Western Cape. It focuses on the full production line of private and public property projects and associated infrastructure provision.

It therefore actively engages and lobby politicians and government representatives and provides detailed input, guidance and feedback on draft legislation and policy.

The WCPDF’s aim primarily is make the public sector aware of the ramifications that decision-making processes and service delivery have on property development and construction and, in turn, the economy and most importantly jobs. And while the industry is always impacted by national legislation, the most critical development issues tend to occur at ground level, and therefore our emphasis is regional. Property is produced at municipal level.

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