Informal Dwelling Research Articles

A survey of blood lead levels among young Johannesburg school children

Studies conducted around the world have established beyond doubt that elevated childhood blood lead levels may lead to detrimental health effects. Research has shown that certain groups of South African children are at particular risk of elevated blood lead levels. Johannesburg is the largest urban complex in southern Africa, with a population of around 3 million and extensive industrial and manufacturing activity. Among the challenges posed in the city are rapid urbanization, extensive poverty, and inequity. Little information on the blood lead distribution of Johannesburg children is available. This study was undertaken to determine blood lead levels among children living in three areas of Johannesburg: inner city suburbs and the low-income townships of Alexandra and Westbury to the north and west of the city center, respectively. The results indicated that blood lead levels ranged from 6 to 26 μg/dL, with a mean level of 11.9 μg/dL. The blood lead levels of 78% of children equaled or exceeded 10 μg/dL, the current international action level. Maternal educational status, the presence of smokers in the home, and living in an informal dwelling were among the factors associated with elevated blood lead levels.

Housing Policy in a Context of HIV/AIDS and Globalization

Perceptions of the role of government in addressing the housing problem in low-income countries have moved from the need for publicly-subsidized formal housing to lesser subsidies for site and service schemes to a sustainable (not subsidized) enabling role focusing on urban management and investment in infrastructure. The shift is premised on government ensuring delivery of services such as water sanitation and electricity and household investment in and the upgrading of informal units. The presumption is that informal dwelling units will create an outlet for personal savings through becoming a valuable commodity freely tradable on a secondary housing market. In this paper I argue that the policy wheel must again turn. In the midst of the economic and social dislocation arising from HIV/AIDS and globalization that in sub-Saharan Africa at least is leading to increasing unemployment and declining household incomes the premise underlying housing policy for a significant proportion of the population should be that households seek to minimize housing expenditure. This perception arose out of the discussions of a team of consultants preparing a housing policy for Swaziland (Tomlinson et al. 2000). We approached the project with conceptions of international best practice such as can be found in the Habitat Agenda (United Nations 1996) but as the project progressed these conceptions came to seem more like a passing orthodoxy. If the policy was to focus on low-income groups then alternative perceptions and measures would be necessary. This paper is taken forward by considering the two key assumptions underlying housing best practice the evolution of housing policy the depredations of HIV/AIDS the impact of globalization and the requirement that for a significant proportion of the population housing services not dwelling units should come to be viewed as a welfare service. Illustrative empirical material is drawn from South Africa but it is anticipated that aspects of this paper will apply more widely throughout sub-Saharan Africa which has close to 70% of the global total of HIV-positive people (Abt Associates 2000: 6). A comparison of the HIV/AIDS policy differences among certain sub-Saharan African countries is contained in a short Appendix. (authors)

Population Targets and Urban Consolidation – The NSW Experience

For a period in the early 1980s informal dwelling targets were used in an endeavour to increase dwelling production in existing urban areas. These targets were for the number of dwellings to be produced annually, for each LG A in the Sydney Region. To some extent the targets complemented projections for development in release areas included in the Urban Development Program, which had become a key instrument of housing and urban development policy by the early 1980s