JHC; Yeoville Citichat 28 November 2008

CITICHAT 47/2008 - 28 November 2008


JHC goes “outer city” whilst remaining committed to “inner”

Generally I don’t get involved in reporting on initiatives outside of the inner city, there’s enough happening inside! However, one of my favourite “inner city” entities, the Johannesburg Housing Company, is developing its first project outside of the inner city and one cannot criticise them for taking their unique expertise and entrepreneurial approach to other parts that can only benefit from the experiences learnt in the inner city. On Wednesday, JHC held its project launch and AGM luncheon at the site of the project in Cosmo City.

Why “one of my favourite inner city companies”? Right from its establishment in 1995 it set out not to be just another housing provider but to rather provide homes, not housing, and create community, rather than a collection of disparate tenants. This year’s Annual Report really provides fascinating evidence of this approach. The Company strives to achieve its objectives via a number of innovative approaches. One of these is through a community development subsidiary, Makhulong A Matala, which monitors and handles social issues; entry and exit interviews; provides a programme to assist tenants who fall in arrears with rental payment; provides family financial management courses; establishes and manages creches within JHC developments using service providers who are independent, qualified early childhood development practitioners; presents vocational training courses (even certificated fire fighting courses); provides homework centres and presents after-school homework assistance programmes (supporting mathematics, reading and language as well as creative and empowering methods of play, computer skills training and life skills training). Then there is sport, with Makhulong organizing its own leagues in soccer and netball where teams from the different JHC buildings play one another. The Leagues have now broadened their horizons by joining the Inner City Football Association (did you know there was one?) and Central Gauteng Netball.



Tenants of course, respond to such an approach with their own initiatives – for instance at Jeppe Oval a youth group has set up its own savings club; at Stanhope Mansions a debating group has developed to discuss “social and lifestyle issues that affect them” – as a result Makhulong arranged for them to visit Wits where they learnt about public speaking and the parliamentary process of debate! This has led to a further extension of debate with other youth in neighbouring JHC accommodation looking particularly at social and lifestyle policies that could be introduced to the youth of their buildings.



And JHC isn’t some insignificant entity but rather a now complex organization with nearly 3 000 income generating units producing a total rental income of nearly R80 million a year. There can be no doubt that its approach to “homes not housing” and “community not tenants” has had a substantial influence on trading results. Where else, particularly with this many units, does one find rental arrears at 0.34% of total rent billings and bad debts of 0.05%?



The 2008 Annual Report contains an interesting page on “Who lives in JHC Buildings? (obviously this currently relates to only inner city tenants). It shows that 46% are single households; 39% couples or families and 10% single parent mothers and children. 76% of adults are employed and another 6% are self employed; 8% are students but only 40% of adults work in the inner city with the balance working elsewhere in Joburg. 22% have a car; 43% use taxis and transport and 13% walk to or from work and school. 79% are adults (over 18) of which 48% have matric as their highest qualification and 39% have post matric qualifications.



The new project named Hlanganani, is in fact the first social component of Cosmo City situated to the north-west of central Jozi. Cosmo City is one of central government’s flagship projects in that it embraces the “Breaking New Ground” concept that the Housing Ministry launched a few years back. The concept is a major move away from previous planning regimes to ‘inclusive housing’ by promoting fully subsidised, partially subsidised and bonded housing for the low and middle income market in one mega development. Through the JHC project it will add ‘social housing for letting’ to its mix. About a hundred hectares of the Cosmo City twelve hundred hectare site has been developed, already providing more than 6 000 houses with an ultimate population of between 65 000 and 70 000 people. This is not one of the old approaches of sticking thousands of poor people far away from employment opportunities but aims to provide opportunities to various economic levels within the development through formal and informal retail and industrial areas. There are superb looking schools and clinics already built. This is the first step towards a truly integrated society and Cosmo City could well be the model.



Much of JHC’s success can be traced to the vision of its CEO, Taffy Adler, who was honoured in 2007 with the Schwab Foundation Award ‘South Africa’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ which follows a number of other personal and company awards. Well done Taffy, richly deserved! Taffy for President!



According to the 2008 Annual Report, JHC is continuing to invest in the inner city with the refurbished Cresthill and Gaelic Mansions coming on stream at the end of last year and Bonvista, next door to the latter, being refurbished. There are also a number of other inner city projects that will be announced in due course.



Another major initiative that was introduced through JHC in 2004 is the eKhaya Neighbourhood Association. This initiative has focused on the public environment, initially in areas where JHC developments are situated but now spreading to other parts of Hillbrow. This brings together eKhaya’s security and cleaning teams with relevant city departments, the SAPS, and Hillbrow Sector Community Policing Forum, churches and community organizations, etc. and, at heart, are building ‘management networks developed in the interests of good neighbourliness and community service’. The process is predicated on three “tenets”

• Investment in physical repair and ongoing maintenance of building and public space infrastructure

• Good management both within buildings and in the public space

• Development of strong relationships where those involved assume responsibility, recognize their obligations, accept accountability and develop shared trust – these relationships involve property owners, their building managers, residents and users, and councilors and agencies of the City.



These three tenets have led to a wide range of ongoing programmes:

• eKhaya safe New Year

• Lane Management – keeping the notorious lanes between buildings clean and secure

• Promoting environmental health

• Maintaining the public environment

• Engaging with Council regarding ‘bad buildings’

• Providing supplementary services – cleaning and security

• Making public space and recreation facilities safe and accessible for residents – a couple of weeks ago I visited a once grotty space between buildings, now a basketball court attracting a great deal of activity.

• eKhaya Kidz Day – an organised day of fun and games for kids

One of the champions of the EKhaya approach has been Josie Adler who I think is best described as a ‘passionate community organizer/activist’ (but then all community organizers are passionate!) She wrote to me some time ago about the importance of community involvement in urban management “It really is not rocket science that imposition of management regimes is not sustainable in meaningful terms – it didn’t work for apartheid and it won’t work for Joburg’s inner city regeneration.” She’s right and eKhaya proves the point. Incidentally another community organizer is President-in-waiting Barack Obama! Neal Peirce says that his “history in grassroots organizing got its first real blast of national attention from the Republicans. Rudy Giuliani, keynoting the GOP’s convention in St. Paul, provoked a wave of snickers and catcalls by sneeringly asking, “What’s a community organizer?” Sarah Palin followed with a dig of her own. (Neither of them exactly covered themselves with glory in the Presidential race – my note!)

On Nov. 4, they (and we) learned that Obama’s three years on the streets of Chicago, helping the unemployed find jobs and helping neighborhoods press the city for critical services, was a first step in building the impressive organizational skills to win the presidency of the United States.

So, maybe its Josie for Pres!



Another community activist is Maurice Smithers who has left his position in Provincial Government to become “the development coordinator of the yeoville bellevue community development initiative”. He has just started a newsletter on this area called “Yeovue” and you can e-mail him for details on maurice.smithers@telkomsa.net Maurice writes “Please find attached the latest Yeoville Bellevue newsletter. As always, your comments are welcome. Your contributions would be even more welcome. Sponsorship support - that goes without saying. The newsletter cannot survive without it.Apologies too for the small type. This is because we do not yet have sufficient cash flow to allow us to have more pages or to migrate to an A4 size. Our eventual goal, of course, is a tabloid size (A3) weekly community newspaper. Further on down the road ...........” Maurice deserves support, he has been a Yeoville ‘passionata’ for as long as I can remember and then some! Maurice for Pres!



The point is that there are so many truly committed people who are passionate about the inner city and particular aspects or corners of it, that they deserve all the recognition and support we can give them.

Sadly, I had a lot of responses to my PS of last week with regard to JMPD officers openly littering the streets – here are two examples:

“I have also seen many JMPD and SAPS officers doing the same, mainly in the main road into oncoming heavy traffic.”

“In full view of about four disbelieving witnesses, I have seen a Jeppe Constable relieving himself on the pavement and when he was confronted, we were waved off as if we were being petty. It is depressing, with depression being a symptom of helplessness. If these are the visible role models for society how am I going to stop the vagrants from defecating in the park next door to my property



Next week we’ll start a wrap up for the year with a review of inner city progress through 2008.



Cheers, neil