The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

ing privately owned homes, and the CHL stopped building poor whites
areas. In the 1960s, although there was a shortage of houses to let to the
lower middle-income group, the CHL proclaimed that ”the needs for the
really sub-economic group were catered for” (CHL, SWR: 1962). Due to
the economic boom and state housing loans, the housing crisis in Johannesburg
had also been solved by the mid-1960s (Parnell 1988a: 596).
The professionals began having doubts concerning the quality of the
tenants and the selection procedure at the end of 1950s when the atmosphere
in the area deteriorated. The CHL’s difficulties in finding suitable
tenants worsened in the 1960s when the civil servants, most of whom
were low-income whites, became eligible for substantial housing subsidies.
Later the housing subsidies were extended to the private sector, and
first-time homeowners (most of whom were white) could receive assistance
with the building of homes (Parnell 1988a: 597).
In the 1970s the Company had difficulties in letting all three-and twobedroom
houses in its Villages, due to ”a lack of suitable applicants”.
Maximum income limits 147 were adjusted again and again in the 1970s to
attract residents. (CHL, SWR: 1972.)
The selection committee’s minutes from the 1970s show that people
with debt, alcoholism and marital problems were given homes if they
merely manage to create an impression that they were interested in being
rehabilitated. Although very few people were now refused, the committee
kept up the pretence that the residents were monitored. Their interests and
hobbies were listed, and gardening and church attendance were seen as
signs of hope: the Company’s goal was still to turn them, against all odds,
into good whites. (CHL, SWR: 1972-1979.)
A comparison with the stringent selection principles applied in the
1940s shows that in practice the objective to select perfect citizens was
abandoned. The houses were given to people who were not in paid work,
or did not bring their young, nuclear families along. In the 1970s approximately
a quarter 148 of the families who were allocated a house in Epping
Garden Village consisted of young people who had grown up in the area
and whose parents were still living there. Ten per cent of the newcomers
were single-parent families. State welfare grants were now the most important
single source of income in the suburb. (CHL, SWR: 1972-1979.)
147 I.e. from R150 at the beginning of the decade (1972) to R540 per month (1979), subject
to those applicants with sub-economic incomes receiving priority.
148 Forty-one out of the 169 families who moved there between 5.2.1975 and 31.7.1978.
171