‘Build Together’ fraught with internal wrangling

INTERNAL squabbles at the Twahangana Self-Help Housing Group Scheme have uncovered flaws in Government’s Build Together programme, meant to make housing affordable for the poor.

‘BUILDING TOGETHER’The Build Together programme started in 1991, and was decentralised to local authorities in 2000. Ensuring ‘the right to adequate shelter’ is the key objective of the programme, which offers support to low-income households who use self-help efforts to build their own homes and who have no access to loans from commercial financial institutions.The Twahangana Group in Windhoek is one of the many self-help groups established under this concept, which is monitored under the City’s allocation principles for low-cost residential erven, mainly in Katutura, Wanaheda, Okuryangava, Goreangab, Hakahana, Havana and Otjomuise. But while the Build Together concept provides groups of low-income households with a chance to acquire land through a group effort and has been successful in housing thousands of low-income people, problems at several of these schemes have shown that it falls short in providing individuals with real land rights.TWAHANGANAIn December 2001, the Twahangana group bought Erf 3219 at Goreangab, which measures 66 612 square metres. The erf was informally subdivided by a land-surveying company to accommodate 243 households. The individual sites on the erf average 200m², and are assigned to the members of the group.But the group has become fraught with problems, with members claiming that the executive committee has mismanaged the scheme. The group members demand the auditing of Twahangana’s books, improved servicing of land, replacement of the current management, the intervention of the City of Windhoek to help solve the group’s problems, and the registering of plots under individual’s names. The executive committee, on the other hand, argues that group members aren’t pulling their weight in payments for municipal services, and has threatened five members, believed to be organising the community against the committee, with disciplinary action or the termination of their group membership. The committee says it has approached the City for the secondary upgrading of the land in terms of road infrastructure, water, electricity provision, and other municipal services, in addition to the basic water, sewerage and refuse removal services currently provided. According to the group’s sale agreement with the City of Windhoek, these upgrades are the responsibility of the group and can be done in consultation with the City. The committee says it is awaiting a response.OWNERSHIP?Although communal developments like this allows easier access to land – particularly in towns – the problem is that land bought by the group cannot be registered in the names of individuals, as members of the Twahangana Group want to do.The threat of membership termination, and the reliance on the wider group for the service development of the area, re indicative of the lack of security that residents actually have.’Many of Windhoek’s urban poor cannot afford a 300m2 erf, which under the current National Policies is the minimum erf size for which individual land rights can be attained. To ensure security of tenure and affordability of serviced land to all residents, the City sells land as ‘General Residential’ zoned block erven,’ says Geraldine van Rooi, Section Planner for Sustainable Development at the City of Windhoek.’Take note that there is only one erf under discussion here, and such erf has been informally subdivided into a number of sites almost similar to a sectional-title scheme development,’ she says.Van Rooi says because of the absence of legislation that makes it possible to register erven of less than 300m2, individual members of a group scheme are not able to enjoy individual tenure rights.In essence, then, members of a group only own land as part of the group, and have no individual land rights to the plot they are allocated by the group.POLICY FLAWSThe ownership impasse described above highlights the bigger flaws in the policy framework on affordable housing for the poor, and the lacklustre approach to dealing with this problem.In 1997, the Flexible Land Tenure System was proposed, but is yet to be implemented. This system would essentially allow for the upgrade of group-based tenure rights, as is the case with the Twahangana Group, to individual tenure rights, as per the request of community members. The final version of the Flexible Urban Land Tenure Bill was submitted in 2004, but to date it has not been scrutinised by legislation bodies, examined by a Regulation Committee, or promulgated as an Act. ‘Security of tenure for the urban poor is a dilemma that is of national concern and needs to be addressed at a national level,’ says Van Rooi.’The speedy promulgation of the proposed Flexible Land Tenure System will be the response to this concern.’She also suggests that the land tenure problem could be addressed by granting permission to register individual land rights on erven less than 300m2 in size, but notes that this directive can only come from the Minister of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development.’As self-help group development bears similarities with sectional-title development, such avenues could also be explored. This will however be very costly under the existing legislation that requires that a professional land surveyor be appointed to survey a sectional-title scheme,’ she adds.THE REAL DEALPolicy flaws highlighted by the ongoing problems in self-help group schemes illustrate that much remains to be done in addressing land rights and land security for the poor. While some self-help groups have been successful in addressing the needs of their members, others, such as the Twahangana Group, show that without individual land rights, the poor remain at the mercy of policy and the effectiveness of the group itself.In this respect, the Build Together programme’s aim ‘to meet large-scale housing needs through an enabling approach’ fails to fully enable the poor.nangula@namibian.com.na