Evicting and deporting foreign nationals is not fixing Joburg’s inner-city housing crisis, Seri says
The plan adopted by the City of Johannesburg to evict people from hijacked buildings in order to turn these assets into low-cost housing, is a futile exercise. Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri) director of research and advocacy Alana Potter was speaking at the South African Human Rights Commission indaba on Tuesday, on access to housing for migrants living in Gauteng. Potter told the gathering in Braamfontein that section 26 of the Constitution held that everyone had a right to adequate housing. "Citizenship is not specified in the constitution. It does not say that everyone who is a South African has a right to proper housing. It says everyone who lives in SA [has this right]‚" she said. Potter said that housing eligibility criteria were contained in the National Housing Code‚ which set out a variety of housing subsidies and programmes. One of the general criteria for housing subsidies is that the beneficiary is either a citizen or permanent resident. Potter raised a number of...
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