Africa: UN HABITAT awards African housing institutions
By Henry Neondo
The Johannesburg Social Housing Company (JOSHCO) Monday was among winners announced by the UN Habitat of its 2010 Scroll of Honour, the UN’s most prestigious award in human settlements development.
The awards, which honour individuals and institutions instrumental in improving living conditions in towns and cities, will be bestowed on World Habitat Day.
JOSHCO was awarded for providing tens of thousands of affordable housing units, improved living conditions and basic services to poor families.
JOSCHCO, owned by the City of Johannesburg has a mandate to provide quality
affordable housing to the citizens of Johannesburg.
JOSHCO provides and manages affordable rental housing stock for the lower income market as part of its contribution to eradicating the housing backlog.
The social housing products it develops and manages are predominantly well-located medium to high-density rental flats that are leased to tenants at an affordable monthly rate.
JOSHCO is overseen by the member of the mayoral committee responsible for housing, Strike Ralegoma.
As part of an exemplary project based on community development, since 2004 it has converted former male-only mine hostels, derelict inner city buildings and some slum districts into liveable homes.
Organizing youth days, sports programmes, clean-up campaigns and other activities as part of its development plan, JOSHCO teams focus on priorities like violence against women and children; youth; the family; early childhood development; and
measures to reduce crime within communities.
Other winners from Africa include The Ministry of Housing and urban Development of Morocco and its agency, the Al Omrane Group, which was awarded for delivering one of the world’s most successful and comprehensive slum reduction and improvement programmes.
In a concept already being replicated in Egypt and Tunisia, the Moroccan programme widely considered the best of its kind in Africa, is spearheading Morocco’s Cities without Slums drive.
The Ministry had set a target in 2004 of humanely clearing the slums in 85 cities by the year 2012. Working with Al Omrane, in the past decade it has improved or eliminated 45.8 percent of the country’s slums which are home to 1.6 million people.