Sustainability of the government policy on social housing construction in South Africa: the emerging issues

Abstract

South Africa began constructing free affordable housing for less privileged citizens due to apartheid policies. The policy implementation has, over the years, experienced many issues. This study sought to assess the affordable housing policy’s sustainability from the construction professionals’ perspective. A qualitative research approach was used to interview randomly selected construction professionals with experience with social housing construction in South Africa. The data received were analysed using thematic content analysis. The findings present some significant issues that endanger the sustainability of the government’s free social housing policy. These issues are corruption in the allocation process, poor housing quality; the economy may not be able to support, lack of job opportunities leading to migration of the beneficiaries, no plan to reduce government dependency, disregard for environmental issues and lack of framework, among others. The government’s failure to institute effective policies to guard the construction processes negatively affects the main stakeholders’ confidence in the housing implementation and threatens this noble policy’s sustainability. This study reveals the wrongs identified by construction professionals involved in the construction of the free houses, which threatens the policy sustainability. The findings will give the government insight into policy problem areas that must be examined to strengthen policy sustainability.