Rental Housing - UN-Habitat

Photograph 1: Council housing in Cape Town, South AfricaMany poorer countries might have followed the example but fewdeveloping countries had the resources to build on a massive scale. Only petrolrichnations such as Saudi Arabia, socialist regimes such as China and Egypt(under Nasser), the apartheid regime in South Africa, and certain countriesfacing massive influxes of refugees, such as Hong Kong and Singaporemanaged to build public housing in quantity. 17 Some Latin American governmentsdid build the equivalent of 15 per cent of the housing stock in theircapital cities, for example, in Bogotá, Caracas, Mexico City and Santiago, andeven larger proportions in new cities such as Brasília and Ciudad Guayana. 18However, little of that housing was rented and most was sold to the occupants.By contrast, the apartheid regime in South Africa built large numbers of publichousing units for rent, both as single-family residences and as hostels. 19 InKenya, too, the “local authorities built a good number of rental housingschemes to provide subsidized accommodation within local authority jurisdictions”.20 Elsewhere in Africa government rhetoric greatly outweighed anyachievement on the ground; in Nigeria, for example, although public housingwas warmly embraced by official rhetoric very few housing units wereproduced even during the height of the oil boom. 21The fundamental problem facing public housing in developing countrieswas that supply never matched demand. Given the imbalance between theChapter II: Nature of the rental housing stock 29