Equal Spaces

While the world was locking down in March 2020, the four-year Equal Spaces project was wrapping up. It helped demonstrate a way to overcome South Africa’s legacy of spatial apartheid - the forced separation and marginalization of its black majority population. The project showed that well-managed, affordable and secure social housing can revitalize inner city urban communities and provide previously disadvantaged families with access to socio-economic opportunities. This will both alleviate poverty and contribute to economic growth. 27 sites in Cape Town and eThekwini (Durban) are now planned for 9,460 social and 340 transitional housing units. These projects will provide homes for over 28,000 people.

Another remarkable success of Equal Spaces is the renewed and strengthened relationship between social housing institutions and government agencies. Moving forward, these partnership will engage 12 more municipalities in social housing while setting up many new social housing institutions. They will benefit from case studies and a set of online “smart partnership” tools developed with the National Association of Social Housing Organizations in South Africa.

We are especially proud that Equal Spaces helped develop and initiate a Gender Equality Strategy for Social Housing. Implementation is continuing with a strong focus on preventing and responding to gender-based violence. This is just one example of how to provide holistic support to develop better housing conditions and more sustainable communities.

The Equal Spaces project happened because of Rooftops Canada, which not only provided important support on housing in South Africa, but also in other developing countries in Africa. Perhaps most significant was the sensitivity of the people involved to the conditions in South Africa and the programme’s ability to adapt the technical knowledge and skills from Canada to deal with the very different social and economic context of our country.

- Anthea Houston Chairperson, National Association of Social Housing Organizations in South Africa