Spending on housing has almost tripled since 2004, which is indicative of the growing emphasis on service delivery in the national budget.
Between 2004 and the current financial year, the budget increased at an average annual rate of 27,7%. It is forecast to rise 19% by 2011.
But the housing department has attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. There have been accusations of mismanagement and shoddy workmanship on top of rising backlogs.
The department may be getting more money than it deserves, says DA housing spokesman Butch Steyn. "Throwing money at housing is not going to resolve the underlying problems, such as skills, underspending and backlogs."
The department should rather prioritise capacity at national, provincial and local level, Steyn says.
Spending on municipal infrastructure will rise dramatically. Over the next three years, R45bn will be handed to the Breaking New Ground Programme, and another R67bn will be pumped into municipal infrastructure grants.
Steyn says the increase is welcome. Provinces tend to plan housing developments without the accompanying infrastructure like roads, water and sanitation, and then make claims that they do not have money, he says.
David Hemson, director of the Human Sciences Research Council's Centre for Service Delivery, takes a dimmer view. He believes inflated housing numbers belie the facts about service delivery at municipal level.
However, the department is trying to clean up its act. The Housing Development Agency has been created to identify, purchase and develop land for housing development on behalf of municipalities. The recent appointment of the agency's CEO, Taffy Adler, who founded the award-winning Johannesburg Housing Company, is a positive step for the department, which has a history of creating agencies that fail soon after.
