JOHANNESBURG - The City of Johannesburg is conducting an audit of people living in the city’s social housing and RDP accommodation to ensure that only lawful occupants are housed within them, mayor Herman Mashaba said on Sunday.
Mashaba said he had received repeated complaints that some of these properties were currently housing unlawful occupiers, including undocumented persons who were not permitted to occupy those properties by law.
The audit of people currently housed within these properties would provide a departure point for verifying the claims made and for taking any intervention to address any unlawful conduct, he said.
"In my view, Joscho's [Johannesburg Social Housing Company] provision of housing is one of the pivotal interventions for providing residents with the dignity of a roof over their heads with over 3 000 units at their disposal. The same goes for the provision of RDP housing. This is why we cannot allow lawlessness to undermine our efforts to provide proper housing.
"It is no secret that as a city we face a housing crisis, one where approximately 300 000 units are required urgently if we are to make inroads against the housing backlog," Mashaba said.
This coupled by an urban migration of 3 000 people to Johannesburg monthly was an indication that urgent intervention was required to managing the pressures faced by the city.
"Indeed, some residents have been on the housing list since the mid-90s. This makes the investigation into the claims made by residents all the more pressing. More importantly, should the claims prove substantially true we need to understand not only how this happened, but hold those responsible to account. This said, I have requested that the final report on this audit be provided to me by the end of October 2018," Mashaba said.