Savitri on housing

I was watching an episode of “Vice” where a reporter was investigating acres of unfinished and unoccupied apartment complexes in China. These building projects, designed to generate revenue through real estate, are abandoned because they are expensive and located in areas far from work. They were built over farmlands, effectively displacing thousands of farmers and as one woman bemoaned “turned them into beggars”. Contrast that with the surplus of informal settlements and backyard dwellings that I see in Cape Town it is not hard to see that humans are doing things inefficiently. The problem is, how do you fix something so complicated and far along?

Empty apartments in Chenggong, China (source)

Informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa

I don’t pretend to have the answers nor do I think the answer is so simple that it could be explained in a blog post. I think one thing that has to happen, however, is a consciousness of this problem. Maybe you don’t know what to do about it but maybe someone you tell does or maybe someone they know will have an inkling of innovation. But just as importantly, I think, there must be consciousness of all the parts to the problem. Why can’t we just build housing structures anywhere for all the people who need homes to live in? For one, it would be unfair to move people away from their place of work and family and social community and resources. For another, we need to make sure that the area those houses or apartments are being built are suitable not only for the people who going to be living there but for any people who are living there already. It is not fair to interrupt other people’s environments either.

This dilemma reminds me of my first few weeks in Cape Town. Marita was telling us about an area in Khayelitsha that had suffered a terrible fire and people were currently discussing whether they wanted to rebuild the community with roads that would permit easy access for fire safety vehicles but that would displace approximately 30% of the community. I wondered, why not build multi-level apartments so that the same number of people could live there and still access emergency care when they need it? But then, what would happen to these people while they waited for such a building to be constructed? There always seems to be a “but” and so often short term solutions seem to negate or complicate long term goals. How do you integrate the two and how do you address the “but”s? Maybe someone who reads this will know.