Cohousing-L Mailing List: COHOUSING IN SOUTH AFRICA

[Graham Jacobs (graham.jacobs]

To: cohousing-l [at] uci.com

Under the new government South Africa is faced with the huge task of 
housing several million people. A programme has been put in place to try 
to deal with the immense socio economic backlog that was created under 
the apartheid regime. The RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme) 
has as its focus the building of capacity throughout our country. To a 
large degree the means the redesign of the process of governance i.e. 
changing from an authoritarian mode to one of service to the community / 
ties at their request. 
In terms of housing this means building some 2.5 million homes this 
century. I have only recently become acquainted with the concept of co-
housing and I believe that this living style could be replicated on a 
vast scale i.e. building thousands of 20-30 unit "villages" instead of 
postbox houses spread over huge tracts. I don't know that this has a 
precedent because it seems to require intense negotiation by the future 
inhabitants of a scheme before anything happens. However the process 
through which funding is provided demands that the community place a 
business case for the housing development funds they want. In order to 
make their case, the community would have had to go through some form of 
consensus, but would  have made proposals that fitted their current 
knowledge of what options were available. 
I see this as an ideal opportunity for us to do something that may not 
have been done before. Does anyone out there have any ideas about the 
best way to tackle this one ?

Graham Jacobs - Pretoria, South Africa.
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