4. HOUSING IS VERY TECHNICAL AND UNTRAINED PEOPLE CANNOT MAKE SOUND TECHNICAL JUDGMENTS. DOESN’T COMMUNITY-DRIVEN HOUSING RESULT IN HOUSING OF A VERY POOR QUALITY?

There are many examples that demonstrate that community-driven housing processes can achieve satisfactory technical results and that in many cases the results may even be superior to those achieved by the private or public sectors without community participation.  The United Nations recognised this in the 1990s already, when they first started promoting community-driven housing.[1] The first Human Development Report calls for all governments to place people at the centre of development processes. The Public Service Commission noted that where traditional People’s Housing Processes had been implemented with proper support, the construction quality of houses was better than the quality of some traditional contractor-built houses.[2] More recently, projects like Freedom Park and Netreg have also demonstrated what is possible and regardless of their shortcomings these projects are not technically worst than traditional contractor-built houses.

[1] United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (1990) Human Development Report 1990, New York

[2] The Public Service Commission (2003) Report on the Evaluation of the National Housing Subsidy Scheme, Pretoria.