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Fewer able to own a home

Johannesburg - The recession took a toll on home ownership in South Africa last year, with the percentage of households that own their homes falling to 56%, after rising from 53.1% in 2002 to 57.8% in 2007, according to Statistics SA.

Stats SA on Thursday released its General Household Survey (GHS) for 2009, which has been conducted annually since 2002 and was undertaken in June 2009. The GHS covers six broad areas: education, health, social development, housing, household access to services and facilities, food security and agriculture.

The percentage of home ownership refers to those households who are living in formal dwellings, and doesn't include informal settlements, so the figure is strictly speaking not a reference to the proportion of households living in their own homes. Stats SA said the decrease in the proportion of home ownership between 2007 and 2009 was "most likely caused by the recession which impacted severely on households' liquidity during most of 2009".

The GHS said that North West was the province showing the least progress in housing delivery, with the percentage of households that are shack dwellers soaring from 12.2% in 2002 to 21.5% in 2007. However, this situation improved again in 2009, with the proportion of shack dwellers falling to 16%, Stats SA noted this was still above 2002 levels. 

At the time of the survey, 12.8% of South Africans were living in 'RDP' or state-subsidised households.

On refuse removal, there was a drastic decrease in the proportion of households that used the disposal services of their municipalities to 53.1% - below the 2002 level of 57.8% that prevailed when the survey was first launched. In Limpopo it is the worst, witht only 12.8% of households having their refuse removed by municipalities. 

In the area of access to water, the situation in the Eastern Cape is dire. The GHS says only 75% of households in the Eastern Cape have access to piped water. However, though still bad, there has been a significant improvement since 2002, when only 56.8% of Eastern Cape households had access.

Nationally, despite annual fluctuations, the percentage of households who receive piped water supplies from their local municipalities increased from 78.2% in 2004 to 83.3% in 2009.

Stats SA said "a large proportion" (58%) of the users of water said the quality of related services they received was good. However, there has been a steady decline in satisfaction levels since 2005 and 2007, when the percentage of users who rated the services as good were 76.3% and 72% respectively.

The percentage of users who rated water services as average rather than good, increased from 15.8% in 2005 to 31.9% in 2009.

The GHS said: "In spite of the resolution to eradicate the use of bucket toilets, it has been found that as soon as bucket toilets were eliminated in a community other newly formed communities started using it for lack of alternatives."

Nationwide, the percentage of households with no toilets or bucket toilets decreased from 12.6% in 2002 to 6.6% in 2009. The province with the highest proportion of no toilet facilities and/or bucket users is the Eastern Cape, at 18.9% of households.

The proportion of households connected to the main electricity supply continued its sharp upward trend, according to the survey. It rose from 76.8% in 2002 to 82.6% in 2009. However, connectivity actually decreased in the Western Cape and Limpopo between 2007 and 2009.

 
 - Fin24.com
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