Renting Shacks: Tenancy in the informal housing sector of the Gauteng Province, South Africa

Abstract

Abstract.Informal settlements are where a significant proportion of urban population find shelter in the cities of the Global South. In some cities, this settlement type is the norm and urban residence are forced into these areas due to a lack of formal housing capacity. Housing tenure in the informal sector is tenuous and the most vulnerable of this group are those who find rental housing in the sector. The idea of a slumlord within this context is one of exploitation and abuse, this study explores the slumlord tenant relationship within informal settlements in Gauteng, South Africa. The study found that there is a symbiotic relationship between landlords and tenants where the informal economy fills a gap in the low income market. While there are issues of exploitation within the informal rental market, this large, unregulated and growing sector points to a significant need for more low cost housing within the formal sector.

Resistencias por el derecho a la ciudad

“…Autores como Janoschka (2002) y López-Morales (citado en Delgadillo, 2015) sostienen que los sectores más vulnerados, en el largo plazo, se ven obligados a enfrentar el encarecimiento del costo de sus medios de subsistencia y de los servicios que la ciudad ofrece, limitando su derecho a acceder a espacios regenerados, sobre todo si sus vidas están permeadas por la informalidad. Los mercados habitacionales informales, además de extraer beneficio de la vulneración directa del derecho a una vivienda segura, refuerzan el estado de marginalidad, invisibilidad e indefensión de las familias residentes (Gunter & Massey, 2017). Esto les coloca en mayor riesgo de sufrir abusos por parte de propietarios -o mesoneros, en este caso-o de ser desalojados (González, Marroquín y Rebollo, 2003;López-Morales, Gasic y Meza, 2014).…”

Rethinking the timescape of home: Domestic practices in time and space

“…The meanings of home and domestic practices are diversified by different dwelling patterns. In recent decades, the deinstitutionalisation of the nuclear family, the growth of Generation Rent/Share and non-familial households 1 (Gilbert et al, 1997; Gunter and Massey, 2017; Heath, 2017; Heath et al, 2018; Holton, 2017; Maalsen, 2018; Gulyani et al, 2018; Wilkinson, 2014), LGBT families (Valentine et al, 2003; Gorman-Murray, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008, 2017; Kentlyn, 2008; Barrett, 2015) and pet ownership (Fox, 2008; Power, 2008; Charles, 2016), the normalisation of moving home and family migration (Holdsworth, 2013, 2019; Chen, 2018; Chen and Bao, 2019), the changing disposition of kinship and friendship (Buzar et al, 2005; Wilkinson, 2014), the visualisation of precarious and unsafe heteronormative homes (Johnston, 2018), the rising of frequency and intensity with which people enter different household situations and the digitalisation of housing and domestic lives (Maalsen, 2018; Strengers and Nicholls, 2017) in Global North and Global South countries make scholars rethink the spatial and temporal imaginations of home and lived domestic experiences. For these scholars, home is not fixed in time and space and is no longer a simple portrait of belonging and intimacy among members of a heterosexual nuclear family.…”

Fire risk reduction on the margins of an urbanizing world

“…Affordable and accessible urban housing has not kept pace with rising global population growth (Gunter and Massey, 2017). Consequently, people have been forced to live in low quality formal housing or within informal settlements.…”