Welcome to our quarterly newsletter of 2016 - updating and informing you, our stakeholders, about our activities and projects. The HDA is a national public development agency that was established by the Housing Development Agency Act of Parliament (Act 23 of 2008) to promote sustainable communities. This, the agency does through making well-located land and buildings available for, and leading and supporting the development of human settlements. For more information on how the HDA is structured, how it works and what services it provides, visit www.thehda.co.za

Dear Stakeholders

The end of 2016 has been momentous for the HDA. We have just held a very successful Developers' Consultative Round Table where we interacted with our stakeholders and government on our revised role as government developer of choice for human settlements. Followed by this, was Minmec's endorsement of our work on the Catalytic Projects. Forty five of these projects, which are led by government, will soon be announced to the public.

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HDA repositions as state developer of choice

We have now evolved and repositioned ourselves as government's developer of choice for human settlements. Hundreds of developers and stakeholders converged on 21 November at our inaugural consultative roundtable which aimed at unpacking the new mandate of the Agency as government's developer of human settlements. At the roundtable, the Deputy Minister of Human Settlements, Zou Kota-Fredericks (MP) announced the HDA as "the official state developer". She further urged private sector developers to enter into partnerships with the government to tackle South Africa's housing backlog. This follows a pronunciation by the Minister of Human Settlements in her 2014 budget speech to transform the HDA into "a fully-fledged public sector developer."

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HDA participates in the Human Settlements Conference

The Housing Development Agency participated in the inaugural Human Settlements Conference hosted by the Department of Human Settlements in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

The three-day conference was held on 5-7 October under the theme "Sustainable future cities and human settlements begin today." It included delegates from government, academics and private sectors.

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HDA demonstrates GIS tool at Habitat III, Ecuador

The HDA, together with the South African National Space Agency (SANSA), was sponsored by the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), to demonstrate how the Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL) is used in South Africa at the United Nations Habitat III Conference. South Africa and Brazil are the first users outside the European Union to have used the GHSL. The GHSL is a global spatial dataset that was developed by the EC-JRC to describe human presence over time. This layer uses satellite images from 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2015 to show where built-up areas, more specifically, human settlements, are located. Satellite images are then related to population statistics obtained from census data, which can be used to monitor settlements growth over time.

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DHS and agencies join forces to handover decent homes to the elderly

The community of Savannah City cheered as they welcomed the Minister of Human Settlements, Honourable Lindiwe Sisulu at a community ceremony to hand over houses in the Sedibeng District Municipality - one of the HDA's strategic catalytic projects in the Gauteng Province on Friday, 23 September 2016.

As an institution of the Department of Human Settlements and a partner with the Gauteng Provincial Human Settlements, the HDA took part in organising this Celebrity Build ceremonial handover.

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Towards the Inner City Programme

As we move towards a developer role, our National Technical team are exploring new programmes that can assist in facilitating this. The Inner City Programme is one that offers an exciting opportunity for the HDA to showcase its ability in moving towards a developer. This programme has the ability to encourage and align with HDA's existing mandate of providing sustainable housing and human settlements in well-located areas. Initially four key municipal inner city areas were identified, as a starting point for the programme, namely the Johannesburg Inner City, The Tshwane Inner City, the KwaMashu City Area and the Ethekwini Inner City. The programme will enable and encourage the HDA to play a long-term role in the provision of affordable housing in the inner city areas of key municipalities.

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Map of the quarter

The attached map illustrates the relationship between housing need and new developments in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality between May 2013 and January 2016. According to the Census 2011 data, Ekurhuleni MM has a total housing need of 226 764 households, with the top three highest ranked Main Places out of 32, holding 47% of the total housing need (> 20 000 households).

In general, the map illustrates a weak correlation between housing need and new developments in the metro e.g Tembisa is ranked first in the housing need and 12th in total number of new developments.

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