24 Feb SHRA encouraged by Government’s commitment to social housing
24 February 2022: The Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA) continues to be encouraged by government’s commitment to the development of social housing across South Africa. This follows on Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s Budget speech on Wednesday, 23 February.
The budget highlighted that Human Settlements projects include six Integrated Residential Development Programmes, 10 social housing projects and two high‐impact privately led developments.
These 18 projects gazetted under the strategic integrated project portfolio have a total investment value of R142 billion and will provide housing for over 170 000 people. The portfolio is projected to create more than 578 000 jobs during development and over 89 000 permanent jobs.
SHRA Acting CEO Mpolai Nkopane explains that this reaffirms the commitment of the government to improve the livelihoods of its citizens by focusing on infrastructure delivery, which underpins the success of a strong, growing economy.
“It was encouraging to hear the renewed commitment from ‘government to ‘sustain economic growth that can South Africa create enough jobs to reduce poverty and inequality; enabling us to reach our goal of a better life for all,’” she adds.
In fact, in as statement by Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Patricia De Lille, and Head of Infrastructure South Africa, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, it was expressed that the Human Settlements sector is progressing at an accelerated pace with social housing receiving much of the attention in the past year. “The Social Housing Regulatory Authority has worked closely with the Infrastructure Fund , where they were able to unlock R305 million approved funding over two years for the priority social housing projects.”