PRECONDITIONS FOR HOUSING CONSOLIDATION- TOWARDS A SUITABLE PACKAGE OF SUPPORT FOR INCREMENTAL HOUSING IN SOUTH AFRICA: A CASE STUDY OF ETHEKWINI MUNICIPALITY

This thesis set out to examine the application of the supporter paradigm in the incremental housing process in South Africa, and the way support for housing consolidation has been orchestrated in practice. It aimed to determine the forms of housing support that constitute preconditions of housing consolidation in the South African low income housing context. The supporter paradigm upon which post-apartheid housing policy is based takes its cue from the proponents of self-help housing, and the institutions that have entrenched it internationally. It outlines the housing support actions that would enable poor households to achieve housing adequacy incrementally. In South Africa, such households would constitute housing subsidy beneficiaries, seeking to achieve housing 'depth ' through the process of housing consolidation, where the national subsidy programme would primarily only have delivered housing 'width ' , or housing starts. Contrary to the expectations of the policy, the pace of housing consolidation has been slow, and the standard of the resultant housing poor. The thesis ' point of departure is that households which have not improved their dwellings, or whose improvement efforts have only yielded temporary housing, continue to experience housing inadequacy, despite subsidy support