Page 43 - SDG Report

HUMAN SETTLEMENTS PROJECT
The eThekwini Informal Settlement Incremental Upgrading Programme aims to improve the lives of people residing in informal settlements, through improved social facilitation, joint planning, and installation of infrastructure to deliver basic services. This comprises communal ablutions facilities (toilets, showers, sinks and wash-troughs for laundry); individual electrification; improved footpaths, access roads and storm-water controls; refuse collection; and improved facilities for Early Childhood Development Centres. Residents’ right to stay on the occupied site is recognized, resulting in safety from eviction and the right to benefit in the incremental upgrading process.
Approximately 287 000 households in eThekwini live in informal settlements. These are characterized by overcrowding; disasters including fires and floods; poor access to basic services including water, sanitation, electricity and emergency access; and high rates of communicable disease. Despite the construction of over 200 000 fully subsidized homes for the poor since 1994, the city is witnessing the perpetuation and spread of these settlements. As an estimated 10 households can be serviced for the same cost as one home can be built in a conventional housing project, this programme accelerates the City’s response to informality and urbanization. Beyond infrastructure, the programme promotes urban safety through the city’s safety strategy, fosters sustainability and resilience, and works with local communities to overcome the challenges of urban poverty, economic exclusion and spatial injustice. This new approach to upgrading is inclusive (of all informal settlements), incremental, participative, partnership- orientated and differentiated.
The informal settlement upgrading program has its beginnings in the provision of water stand-pipes to informal settlements in the early 1990s. This was superseded by the provision of communal ablution blocks and refuse collection initiatives in the mid and late 1990s. In 2011, Council approved the adoption of interim services in informal settlements which were not part of eThekwini’s short-term housing delivery programme. Development of a programmatic approach resulted in the selection of informal settlements utilizing the Housing Spatial Prioritisation Model.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS GOOD PRACTICE 41