Backyard dwellings on the rise in SA

More South Africans are living in formal housing now than ever before - but informal settlements are not getting any smaller.

Cape Town - Although more South Africans are living in formal housing now than ever before, informal settlements are not getting any smaller.

Migration patterns and the burgeoning number of backyard dwellings are major contributors to the current situation.

A new study released by Statistics SA has revealed that although the number of people living in formal dwellings across the country had increased from 76 percent in 2002 to 80 percent in 2014, migration was still the reason for the high number of people living in informal settlements.

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Releasing the report in Parliament yesterday, statistician-general Pali Lehohla said it was less likely that non-migrants were living in informal areas.

Gauteng had experienced the largest migration of 10.9 percent between 2002 and 2011, followed by the Western Cape at 9.4 percent.

The analysis is based on the General Household Survey (2002-2014) and the Census (2006-2011).

Although there had been a decrease in the urban population living in informal settlements from 17 percent in 2002 to 11 percent in 2014, the percentage of households living in informal dwellings had barely decreased – from 13.6 to 13.1 percent during the same period.

The number of households living in informal dwellings spiked to 16.4 percent in 2006. The increase can be attributed to the growing number of households living in informal dwellings in the backyards of other dwellings.

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Deputy director-general for population and social statistics Kefiloe Masiteng said housing delivery remained a moving target because people were continually unbundling households.

“People want their own arrangements. More and more people are making the decision to move. People are also looking for jobs,” she said.

Between 2002 and 2014, the percentage of households living in informal dwellings in the Western Cape averaged bout 15 percent. “Even though the percentage of households living in informal settlements has stagnated, there has been an increase in the percentage of households living in backyard informal dwellings,” said Lehohla.

This was placing a strain on the provision of basic services, he added.

Still, households living in backyards had better access to services than an informal dwelling in a settlement.

While only around 38 percent of informal dwellings surveyed in 2014 had access to piped water and 30 percent had flushing toilets, for backyard dwellings, 84 percent and 76 percent respectively, had access to these services.

Gauteng and the Free State had the biggest proportion of municipalities (at least 80 percent) where more than 5 percent of the dwellings consisted of backyard informal dwellings, while in the Western Cape, 44 percent of municipalities were affected.

The same provinces also carried the heaviest load in terms of the actual levels of informal dwellings in backyards.

The Free State had four municipalities among the top 10, followed by the Western Cape with two – Bitou and Swartland.

Overall, the North West (21 percent) and Gauteng (19 percent) had the highest proportion of its urban population still living in informal settlements.

The biggest declines were in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the Free State.

But despite the proliferation of backyard dwellings, generally, the percentage of households who live in formal dwellings increased across most provinces between 2002 and 2014, but stayed stagnant at 84.8 percent in the Western Cape.

The Western Cape, at 33 percent, had the third-largest number of people waiting for state housing.

More than 30 percent of people waiting for housing in the Western Cape had been waiting for more than 10 years.

CAPE ARGUS