| Broken Homes How the Eastern Cape's Housing plan has failed the POOR
Broken Homes Bhisho is spending R360 million to fix nearly 20 000 broken homes in the province while the poor live in flimsy cardboard units and ghost towns emerge from the ruins of disastrous housing projects. In some areas of the province communities have deserted formal housing settlements because homes were so poorly built they cannot be occupied any longer. The number of homes simply having to be repaired is almost equal to the total number of homes built in the 2006/2007 financial year. While the provincial government tries to rein in its backlog of 800 000 RDP homes, a two-month investigation by the Dispatch has revealed how: View the video response from EC Department of Housing MEC, Nombulelo Mabandla Homes were built in areas where people have long since left; One project in Seymour became state-sponsored “holiday homes” for people who live in other cities and only return in December; A community in Burgersdorp was moved into cardboard houses when their RDP homes began falli