73
74 households lack the ability to afford urban residential land at prices set by the market and thus they cannot stimulate the urban land market to deliver urban land to this segment of the market. As a result, landowners appear to withhold the supply of urban land to low-income households. The limited incomes of these households exposes them to one or both of the following outcomes. The household either pays a large proportion of its income towards housing and not enough money is left to meet non-housing need adequately (Stone, 2004), or the household pays a small proportion of its income towards housing and is exposed to unsatisfactory and squalid housing conditions, sharing shelter with individuals and families in backyard shacks and informal settlements. These outcomes prove that the majority of low-income households cannot afford urban land at the prices set exclusively by the market.
The ANC-government has responded to the shortage of AURL in two ways. Firstly, it repealed apartheid land laws that banned Africans from owning land. Secondly, it has attempted to address the supply-side constraints of the market but has failed to change the institutional arrangements that are responsible for creating conditions that limit the ability of low-income households to purchase urban land without state support. At the same time, low-income households have few alternative ways to access urban land and housing since public financial support is limited and the state only provides partial support to cover as many beneficiaries as possible. Hence, the prices for urban land in strategic locations set by the market hampers the ability of low-income households or the state to purchase land for low-income housing development. Private landowners expect adequate compensation, but the government has a limited budget to effectively deliver urban land for low-income housing.
The approach to deliver urban land via the market has not scaled up delivery or making sense economically or politically. The reason for this failure lies in two fundamental realities of urban land;
it is immobile and durable and prices of urban land in strategic locations close to employment opportunities and amenities often increases faster than incomes of the urban poor. These two aspects of urban land create a web of disincentives that frequently make it impossible to build political consensus at the local level to effectively expropriate urban land for low-income housing, subject to low or no compensation. The most critical aspect of the land affordability problem is that it is out of the main stream of current public discussions on land expropriation. While few, if any, would argue that AURL is less essential than education, employment or health care, the extent of the shortage of AURL for low-income housing is still ignored by policymakers in the current debate on the expropriation of urban land without compensation. This debate has been placed high on the political agenda as a result of public calls by the EFF for mass mobilisation and invasion of vacant urban land.
75 3.4.1.1 Clandestine Acquisition of Urban Land
Most low-income households rely on ‘clandestine acquisition’ and subdivision of urban land to access shelter in areas located close to employment opportunities, public transport and amenities. The parcels of urban land these households settle on are in hazardous areas such as sites on mountain slopes, riverbanks, flood plains, railway setbacks, servitudes of utility services, waste dumps and heavily polluted disused mining dumps that put their occupants at physical and health risk. The urban poor shun most suitable vacant sites that are valued at a high price because landowners would use all means available to immediately evict unwanted occupants. In cases where clandestine land occupations cannot be reversed, it often leads to an ‘illegal’ system of land supply.
The extra-legal subdivision and exchange of urban land which occurs in the informal land market are not controlled and registered by the authorities. The urban poor subsequently build shelter on the
‘illegal’ acquired sites without permits and the quality of such housing is substandard, which is precisely what makes the shelter affordable to low-income households. The ability of low-income households to circumvent standards of settlement establishment and cut costs helps ‘slumlords’ to provide plots that are affordable and easily available relative to other housing options (Payne 1989).
The occupied land is subdivided ‘illegally’ and ‘sold’ for the ‘right to squat’, but no squatter mistakes this ‘right’ for a legal title. In this process, some low-income households ‘acquire’ several plots to lease them out with or without a shack. The first wave of occupants is often organised in a larger group to reduce the vulnerability of the settlement in the critical initial period of land invasion. The price for these plots depends on whether their location is in close proximity to work opportunities and amenities. Although documented data is scattered, it is evident that the informal land market works efficiently to provide affordable plots of land. Regrettably, the housing and economic opportunities that can be potentially unlocked by granting the urban poor AURL with secure tenure are not realised because land administrators are reluctant to ratify processes of informal land acquisition.
3.4.1.2 Impact of Land Cost on Housing Conditions
The unaffordable cost of urban land tends to be overshadowed by the poor quality of housing and living conditions, yet it is the astronomical cost of urban land that creates such housing conditions.
The severe cost burdens prevent low-income households from accessing urban land with secure tenure. As a result, these households have to cut housing costs by living in substandard dwellings that are often of a make-shift nature, since they construct the housing using poor technology and methods and cheap readily available building materials of questionable quality and durability (Wekesa et al, 2011; UN-Habitat, 2003a). Most of these households are overcrowded in informal settlements that lack reticulated infrastructure services (Srinivas, 2005; UN-Habitat, 2003a). As a result, the units cannot adequately protect their inhabitants from weather elements, provide physical security or
76 sanitary living conditions (Buhaug & Urdal, 2013; Govender et al, 2011; Chaudhuri, 2004). Even though only a brief discussion of the impact of land cost on housing conditions is presented in this subsection, it lays the basis for the argument on the need to expropriate urban land subject to low or no compensation. However, a detailed discussion of the living conditions in informal settlements is presented in Chapter 4.
In order to resolve the problems of land distribution, land tenure and land utilisation, the ANC- government implemented a state sponsored land reform programme in 1996 that is differentiated in three ways. Firstly, land reform sought to restore historical land rights to urban land appropriated for white settlement and business activities. Secondly, land reform sought to address tenure rights of indentured farm labourers and sharecrop farmers with adverse possession rights to land. Thirdly, the reforms were intended to redistribute urban land to the landless. All the reforms are meant to expropriate land with compensation and under the guidelines of a ‘willing-seller-willing-buyer’
approach.
3.5 Expropriation of Urban Land After 1996